the
extent of his dependence upon the silenced voice of that woman. It
was her voice that he missed. Abstracted, busy, lost in inward
contemplation, he seldom looked at his wife in those later years. The
thought of his girls was a matter of concern, not of consolation. It
was her voice that he would miss. And he remembered the other child--the
little boy who died at sea. Ah! a man would have been something to lean
upon. And, alas! even Gian' Battista--he of whom, and of Linda, his
wife had spoken to him so anxiously before she dropped off into her last
sleep on earth, he on whom she had called aloud to save the children,
just before she died--even he was dead!

And the old man, bent forward, his head in his hand, sat through the day
in immobility and solitude. He never heard the brazen roar of the bells
in town. When it ceased the earthenware filter in the corner of the
kitchen kept on its swift musical drip, drip into the great porous jar
below.

Towards sunset he got up, and with slow movements disappeared up the
narrow staircase. His bulk filled it; and the rubbing of his shoulders
made a small noise as of a mouse running behind the plaster of a wall.
While he remained up there the house was as dumb as a grave. Then,
with the same faint rubbing noise, he descended. He had to catch at the
chairs and tables to regain his seat. He seized his pipe off the
high mantel of the fire-place--but made no attempt to reach the
tobacco--thrust it empty into the corner of his mouth, and sat down
again in the same staring pose. The sun of Pedrito's entry into Sulaco,
the last sun of Senor Hirsch's life, the first of Decoud's solitude on
the Great Isabel, passed over the Albergo d'ltalia Una on its way to
the west. The tinkling drip, drip of the filter had ceased, the lamp
upstairs had burnt itself out, and the night beset Giorgio Viola and his
dead wife with its obscurity and silence that seemed invincible till the
Capataz de Cargadores, returning from the dead, put them to flight with
the splutter and flare of a match.

"Si, viejo. It is me. Wait."

Nostromo, after barricading the door and closing the shutters carefully,
groped upon a shelf for a candle, and lit it.

Old Viola had risen. He followed with his eyes in the dark the sounds
made by Nostromo. The light disclosed him standing without support, as
if the mere presence of that man who was loyal, brave, incorruptible,
who was all his son would have been, were enough fo