of
laughter and joy, my savings for a month, a dress for my daughter
who is becoming a woman." "But it is necessary that you put aside
these worldly desires," says the voice that she heard in the pulpit,
"it is necessary that you make sacrifices." Yes, it is necessary. The
Church does not gratuitously save the beloved souls for you nor does
it distribute indulgences without payment. You must buy them, so
tonight instead of sleeping you should work. Think of your daughter,
so poorly clothed! Fast, for heaven is dear! Decidedly, it seems
that the poor enter not into heaven. Such thoughts wander through the
space enclosed between the rough mats spread out on the bamboo floor
and the ridge of the roof, from which hangs the hammock wherein the
baby swings. The infant's breathing is easy and peaceful, but from
time to time he swallows and smacks his lips; his hungry stomach,
which is not satisfied with what his older brothers have given him,
dreams of eating.

The cicadas chant monotonously, mingling their ceaseless notes with
the trills of the cricket hidden in the grass, or the chirp of the
little lizard which has come out in search of food, while the big
gekko, no longer fearing the water, disturbs the concert with its
ill-omened voice as it shows its head from out the hollow of the
decayed tree-trunk.

The dogs howl mournfully in the streets and superstitious folk,
hearing them, are convinced that they see spirits and ghosts. But
neither the dogs nor the other animals see the sorrows of men--yet
how many of these exist!

Distant from the town an hour's walk lives the mother of Basilio and
Crispin. The wife of a heartless man, she struggles to live for her
sons, while her husband is a vagrant gamester with whom her interviews
are rare but always painful. He has gradually stripped her of her
few jewels to pay the cost of his vices, and when the suffering Sisa
no longer had anything that he might take to satisfy his whims, he
had begun to maltreat her. Weak in character, with more heart than
intellect, she knew only how to love and to weep. Her husband was
a god and her sons were his angels, so he, knowing to what point he
was loved and feared, conducted himself like all false gods: daily
he became more cruel, more inhuman, more wilful. Once when he had
appeared with his countenance gloomier than ever before, Sisa had
consulted him about the plan of making a sacristan of Basilio, and
he had merely continued to stroke hi