She sang on and on:—­“Open your eyes, arise and walk, my son!  How beautiful you are!  How beautiful you are!”

She sang on:—­“For a morsel of bread I have drowned you, my son!  For a morsel of bread I have borne you to the slaughter!  For that have I raised you!”

But the irate woman with the hooked nose interrupted her:—­“It was not you who drowned him; it was Destiny.  It was not you who took him to the slaughter.  You had placed him in the midst of bread.”  And making a gesture toward the hill where the house stood which had sheltered the lad, she added, “They kept him there, like a pink at the ear.”

The mother continued:—­“O my son, who was it sent you; who was it sent you here, to drown?”

And the irate woman:—­“Who was it sent him?  It was our Lord.  He said to him, ‘Go into the water and end yourself.’”

As Giorgio was affirming in a low tone to one of the bystanders that if succored in time the child might have been saved, and that they had killed him by turning him upside down and holding him suspended by the feet, he felt the gaze of the mother fixed upon him.  “Can’t you do something for him, sir?” she prayed.  “Can’t you do something for him?”

And she prayed:—­“O Madonna of the Miracles, work a miracle for him!”

Touching the head of the dead boy, she repeated:—­“My son! my son! my son! arise and walk!”

On his knees in front of her was the brother of the dead boy; he was sobbing, but without grief, and from time to time he glanced around with a face that suddenly grew indifferent.  Another brother, the oldest one, remained at a little distance, seated in the shade of a bowlder; and he was making a great show of grief, hiding his face in his hands.  The women, striving to console the mother, were bending over her with gestures of compassion, and accompanying her monody with an occasional lament.

And she sang on:—­“Why have I sent you forth from my house?  Why have I sent you to your death?  I have done everything to keep my children from hunger; everything, everything, except to be a woman with a price.  And for a morsel of bread I have lost you!  This was the way you were to die!”

Thereupon the woman with the hawk nose raised her petticoats in an impetus of wrath, entered the water up to her knees, and cried:—­“Look!  He came only to here.  Look!  The water is like oil.  It is a sign that he was bound to die that way.”

With two strides she regained the shore.  “Look!” she repeated, pointing to the deep imprint in the sand made by the man who recovered the body.  “Look!”

The mother looked in a dull way; but it seemed as if she neither saw nor comprehended.  After her first wild outbursts of grief, there came over her brief pauses, amounting to an obscurement of consciousness.  She would remain silent, she would touch her foot or her leg with a mechanical gesture.  Then she would wipe away her tears with the black apron.  She seemed to be quieting down.  Then, all of a sudden, a fresh explosion would shake her from head to foot, and prostrate her upon the corpse.