t were enough to burst
her veins, and rendered her delirious at times. The women waited on her.
She lost her head. Her mistress ran in, from time to time, in affright.
All began to fear that, even if she had decided to allow herself to be
operated on, the doctor, who was not to come until the next day, would
have arrived too late. During the moments when she was not raving,
however, it was evident that her most terrible torture arose not from
her bodily pains, but from the thought of her distant family.
Emaciated, wasted away, with changed visage, she thrust her hands
through her hair, with a gesture of desperation, and shrieked:--

"My God! My God! To die so far away, to die without seeing them again!
My poor children, who will be left without a mother, my poor little
creatures, my poor darlings! My Marco, who is still so small! only as
tall as this, and so good and affectionate! You do not know what a boy
he was! If you only knew, signora! I could not detach him from my neck
when I set out; he sobbed in a way to move your pity; he sobbed; it
seemed as though he knew that he would never behold his poor mother
again. Poor Marco, my poor baby! I thought that my heart would break!
Ah, if I had only died then, died while they were bidding me farewell!
If I had but dropped dead! Without a mother, my poor child, he who loved
me so dearly, who needed me so much! without a mother, in misery, he
will be forced to beg! He, Marco, my Marco, will stretch out his hand,
famishing! O eternal God! No! I will not die! The doctor! Call him at
once I let him come, let him cut me, let him cleave my breast, let him
drive me mad; but let him save my life! I want to recover; I want to
live, to depart, to flee, to-morrow, at once! The doctor! Help! help!"

And the women seized her hands and soothed her, and made her calm
herself little by little, and spoke to her of God and of hope. And then
she fell back again into a mortal dejection, wept with her hands
clutched in her gray hair, moaned like an infant, uttering a prolonged
lament, and murmuring from time to time:--

"O my Genoa! My house! All that sea!--O my Marco, my poor Marco! Where
is he now, my poor darling?"

It was midnight; and her poor Marco, after having passed many hours on
the brink of a ditch, his strength exhausted, was then walking through a
forest of gigantic trees, monsters of vegetation, huge boles like the
pillars of a cathedral, which interlaced their enormous crests,