It had two windows, one almost blinded by a grey wall, the other open to the fields, to a lovely, peaceful hill, to the sky.
Before receiving his visitors Benedetto approached this window to take a last farewell of the fields, the hill, and the poor town itself.

Seized with sudden weakness, he leaned against the sill.

It was a gentle, pleasant weakness.

He was hardly conscious of the weight of his body, and his heart was flooded with mystic beatitude.

Little by little, as his thoughts became vague and objectless he was moved by a sense of the quiet, innocent, external life; the drops falling from the roofs, the air laden with odours of the hills, stirring mysteriously at that hour and in that place.