
In a windswept mountain village, a solitary house shelters a young priest and his aging mother, whose life has been shaped by endless service. The night’s relentless gale seems to press against the walls, turning ordinary sounds into ominous whispers that stir the mother’s dread. As she watches from the doorway, she senses a growing unease that her son’s quiet steps cannot dispel, hinting at a secret he carries beyond his clerical duties.
Paul’s private rituals—trimming his nails, polishing his hair, and lingering before a forbidden mirror—reveal a tension between his holy vocation and a yearning for ordinary vanity. The mother’s attempts to halt his midnight departure are thwarted by an invisible force that holds her in place, amplifying the haunting atmosphere. As the wind howls and the door creaks, the listener is drawn into a fragile world where duty, desire, and an unsettling presence converge, leaving the fate of both mother and son hanging in the night’s breath.
Language
en
Duration
~4 hours (236K characters)
Publisher of text edition
Project Gutenberg
Credits
Produced by Andrés V. Galia, Chris Curnow and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
Release date
2017-01-08
Rights
Public domain in the USA.

1871–1936
Raised in Sardinia and drawn to its stories, she became one of Italy’s most distinctive novelists and the first Italian woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. Her fiction is known for vivid landscapes, strong moral tensions, and deep sympathy for ordinary lives.
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