“It is all God’s will!  What poverty!”

And some gave her ten centimes, others a real, one or two even a peseta.  The old woman went one day to the Archbishop’s palace.  Don Sebastian was engaged and unable to see her, but he sent her two pesetas by one of the servants.

“They don’t mean badly,” said the gardener’s widow, giving her collection to the poor mother, “but each one lives for himself, and his neighbour may manage as he can.  No one divides his cloak with another—­take this, and see how you can get out of your trouble.”

They fed a little better in the shoemaker’s house; the miserable scrofulous children collected in the cloister profited most by the baby’s illness; it was growing daily weaker, lying motionless for hours, with almost imperceptible breathing, on its mother’s lap.

When the unhappy child died, all the people of the Claverias rushed to the home.  Inside could be heard the mother’s wailings, strident, interminable, like the bellowing of a wounded beast; outside the father wept silently, surrounded by his friends.

“It died just like a bird,” he said with long pauses, his words broken by sobs.  “His mother held him on her knees—­I was working—­’Antonio, Antonio!’ she called, ’see, what is the matter with the child, it is moving its mouth and making grimaces?’ I ran up quickly, its face was quite dusky—­as if it had a veil over it.  It opened its mouth, a couple of twitches with its eyes staring, and its neck fell over—­just the same as a bird, just the same.”

He wept, repeating constantly the resemblance between his son and those birds who die in winter from the cold.

The bell-ringer looked gloomily at Gabriel.

“You who know everything, is it true that it died of hunger?”

And the Tato with his scandalous impetuosity shouted loudly—­

“There is no justice in the world!  All this must be altered!  Fancy a child dying of hunger in this house, where money runs like water, and where all those creatures are dressed in gold!”

When the little corpse was carried to the cemetery, the cloister seemed quite deserted; all its life was concentrated in the shoemaker’s house, all the women surrounded the mother.  Despair had rendered that sick and feeble woman furious.  She no longer wept:  her child’s death had made her ferocious—­she wished to bite or to dash her skull against the wall.

“Ay! my s-o-o-o-n! my Antonio!”

At night Sagrario and the other women remained in the house to look after her.  In her desperation she wished to make some one responsible for her misfortune, and she fixed on those highest in the cloister.  Don Antolin had not helped her with the smallest alms; his affected niece had scarcely been in to see the little one, nothing interested her but men.

“It is all Silver Stick’s fault,” wailed the poor mother—­“he is a thief.  He grinds our poverty with his usurer’s snares.  Never a farthing did he give for my son.  And that Mariquita is just the same.  Yes, senor, I do say so.  She only thinks of decking herself out so that the cadets may see her.”