“And I cannot take you away!  I cannot take you in these arms to the church!  My son!  My son!”

She fondled him from head to foot, she caressed him softly.  Her savage anguish was softened to an infinite tenderness.  Her hand—­the burnt and callous hand of a hard-working woman—­became infinitely gentle as she touched the eyes, the mouth, the forehead of her son.

“How beautiful you are!  How beautiful you are!”

She touched his lower lip, already turned blue; and as she pressed it slightly, a whitish froth issued from the mouth.  From between his lashes she brushed away some speck, very carefully, as though fearful of hurting him.

“How beautiful you are, heart of your mamma!”

His lashes were long, very long, and fair.  On his temples, on his cheeks was a light bloom, pale as gold.

“Do you not hear me?  Rise and walk.”

She took the little well-worn cap, limp as a rag.  She gazed at it and kissed it, saying:—­

“I am going to make myself a charm out of this, and wear it always on my breast.”

She lifted the child; a quantity of water escaped from the mouth and trickled down upon the breast.

“O Madonna of the Miracles, perform a miracle!” she prayed, raising her eyes to heaven in a supreme supplication.  Then she laid softly down again the little being who had been so dear to her, and took up the worn shirt, the red sash, the cap.  She rolled them up together in a little bundle, and said:—­

“This shall be my pillow; on these I shall rest my head, always, at night; on these I wish to die.”

She placed these humble relics on the sand, beside the head of her child, and rested her temple on them, stretching herself out, as if on a bed.

Both of them, mother and son, now lay side by side, on the hard rocks, beneath the flaming sky, close to the homicidal sea.  And now she began to croon the very lullaby which in the past had diffused pure sleep over his infant cradle.

She took up the red sash and said, “I want to dress him.”

The cross-grained woman, who still held her ground, assented.  “Let us dress him now.”

And she herself took the garments from under the head of the dead boy; she felt in the jacket pocket and found a slice of bread and a fig.

“Do you see?  They had given him his food just before,—­just before.  They cared for him like a pink at the ear.”

The mother gazed upon the little shirt, all soiled and torn, over which her tears fell rapidly, and said, “Must I put that shirt on him?”

The other woman promptly raised her voice to some one of her family, above on the bluff:—­“Quick, bring one of Nufrillo’s new shirts!” The new shirt was brought.  The mother flung herself down beside him.

“Get up, Riccangela, get up!” solicited the women around her.

She did not heed them.  “Is my son to stay like that on the stones, and I not stay there too?—­like that, on the stones, my own son?”