one for the sake of her family. But this
suggestion of her children only aggravated her profound discouragement,
which had for a long time prostrated her, with increasing anguish. At
these words she burst into tears.

"O my sons! my sons!" she exclaimed, wringing her hands; "perhaps they
are no longer alive! It is better that I should die also. I thank you,
my good master and mistress; I thank you from my heart. But it is better
that I should die. At all events, I am certain that I shall not be cured
by this operation. Thanks for all your care, my good master and
mistress. It is useless for the doctor to come again after to-morrow. I
wish to die. It is my fate to die here. I have decided."

And they began again to console her, and to repeat, "Don't say that,"
and to take her hand and beseech her.

But she closed her eyes then in exhaustion, and fell into a doze, so
that she appeared to be dead. And her master and mistress remained there
a little while, by the faint light of a taper, watching with great
compassion that admirable mother, who, for the sake of saving her
family, had come to die six thousand miles from her country, to die
after having toiled so hard, poor woman! and she was so honest, so good,
so unfortunate.

Early on the morning of the following day, Marco, bent and limping, with
his bag on his back, entered the city of Tucuman, one of the youngest
and most flourishing towns of the Argentine Republic. It seemed to him
that he beheld again Cordova, Rosario, Buenos Ayres: there were the same
straight and extremely long streets, the same low white houses, but on
every hand there was a new and magnificent vegetation, a perfumed air, a
marvellous light, a sky limpid and profound, such as he had never seen
even in Italy. As he advanced through the streets, he experienced once
more the feverish agitation which had seized on him at Buenos Ayres; he
stared at the windows and doors of all the houses; he stared at all the
women who passed him, with an anxious hope that he might meet his
mother; he would have liked to question every one, but did not dare to
stop any one. All the people who were standing at their doors turned to
gaze after the poor, tattered, dusty lad, who showed that he had come
from afar. And he was seeking, among all these people, a countenance
which should inspire him with confidence, in order to direct to its
owner that tremendous query, when his eyes fell upon the sign of an inn
upon which w