And the suspense of waiting rendered them restless, anxious.  “The mother!  There comes the mother now!”

Feeling himself grow sick at heart, Giorgio exclaimed, “Can’t you take him into the shade, or into a house, so that the mother will not see him here naked on the stones, under a sun like this?”

Stubbornly the man on guard objected:—­“He is not to be touched.  He is not to be moved—­until the inquest is held.”

The bystanders gazed in surprise at the stranger,—­Candia’s stranger.  Their number was augmenting.  A few occupied the embankment shaded with acacias; others crowned the promontory rising abruptly from the rocks.  Here and there, on the monstrous bowlders, a tiny boat lay sparkling like gold at the foot of the detached crag, so lofty that it gave the effect of the ruins of some Cyclopean tower, confronting the immensity of the sea.

All at once, from above on the height, a voice announced, “There she is.”

Other voices followed:—­“The mother!  The mother!”

All turned.  Some stepped down from the embankment.  Those on the promontory leaned far over.  All became silent, in expectation.  The man on guard drew the sheet once more over the corpse.  In the midst of the silence, the sea barely seemed to draw its breath, the acacias barely rustled.  And then through the silence they could hear her cries as she drew near.

The mother came along the strand, beneath the sun, crying aloud.  She was clad in widow’s mourning.  She tottered along the sand, with bowed body, calling out, “O my son!  My son!”

She raised her palms to heaven, and then struck them upon her knees, calling out, “My son!”

One of her older sons, with a red handkerchief bound around his neck, to hide some sore, followed her like one demented, dashing aside his tears with the back of his hand.  She advanced along the strand, beating her knees, directing her steps toward the sheet.  And as she called upon her dead, there issued from her mouth sounds scarcely human, but rather like the howling of some savage dog.  As she drew near, she bent over lower and lower, she placed herself almost on all fours; till, reaching him, she threw herself with a howl upon the sheet.

She arose again.  With hand rough and toil-stained, hand toughened by every variety of labor, she uncovered the body.  She gazed upon it a few instants, motionless as though turned to stone.  Then time and time again, shrilly, with all the power of her voice, she called as if trying to awaken him, “My son!  My son!  My son!”

Sobs suffocated her.  Kneeling beside him, she beat her sides furiously with her fists.  She turned her despairing eyes around upon the circle of strangers.  During a pause in her paroxysms she seemed to recollect herself.  And then she began to sing.  She sang her sorrow in a rhythm which rose and fell continually, like the palpitation of a heart.  It was the ancient monody which from time immemorial, in the land of the Abruzzi, the women have sung over the remains of their relatives.  It was the melodious eloquence of sacred sorrow, which renewed spontaneously, in the profundity of her being, this hereditary rhythm in which the mothers of bygone ages had modulated their lamentations.