“Oh, God! oh, God!” she sobbed.  “I will try, yes, I will try....  My child, my dear child!”

Ulrich clasped her closely in his arms, kissed her hair, and said, softly:  “I know, I know, you need love, and you shall find it with me.”

“With you!” she repeated, sobbing.  Then releasing herself from his embrace she hurried to the feverish woman, at whose summons she had left her tent.

As morning dawned, she returned home and found Zorrillo still awake.  He enquired about her patient, and told her he had given the child something to drink while she was away.

Flora could not help weeping bitterly again, and Zorrillo, noticing it, exclaimed chidingly:  “Each has his own griefs to bear, it is not wise to take strangers’ troubles so deeply to heart.”

“Strangers’ troubles,” she repeated, mournfully, and went to rest.

White-haired woman, why have you remained so young?  All the cares and sorrows of youth and age are torturing you at the same time!  One love is fighting a mortal battle with another in your breast.  Which will conquer?

She knows, she knew it ere she entered the tent.  The mother fled from the child, but she cannot abandon her new-found son.  Oh, maternal love, thou dost hover in radiant bliss far above the clouds, and amid choirs of angels!  Oh, maternal heart, thou dost bleed pierced with swords, more full of sorrows than any other!

Poor, poor Florette!  On this July morning she was enduring superhuman tortures, all the sins she had committed arrayed themselves against her, shrieking into her ear that she was a lost woman, and there could be no pardon for her either in this world or the next.  Yet!—­the clouds drift by, birds of passage migrate, the musician wanders singing from land to land, finds love, and remorselessly strips off light fetters to seek others.  His child imitates the father, who had followed the example of his, the same thing occurring back to their remotest ancestors!  But eternal justice?  Will it measure the fluttering leaf by the same standard as the firmly-rooted plant?

When Zorrillo saw Flora by the daylight, he said, kindly:  “You have been weeping?”

“Yes,” she answered, fixing her eyes on the ground.  He thought she was anxious, as on a former occasion, lest his election to the office of Eletto might prove his ruin, so he drew her towards him, exclaiming “Have no fear, Bonita.  If they choose me, and Mannsfeld comes, as he promised, the play will end this very day.  I hope, even at the twelfth hour, they will listen to reason, and allow themselves to be guided into the right course.  If they make the young madcap Eletto—­his head will be at stake, not mine.  Are you ill?  How you look, child!  Surely, surely you must be suffering; you shall not go out at night to nurse sick people again!”

The words came from an anxious heart, and sounded warm and gentle.  They penetrated Florette’s inmost soul, and overwhelmed with passionate emotion she clasped his hands, kissed them, and exclaimed, softly “Thanks, thanks, Pasquale, for your love, for all.  I will never, never forget it, whatever happens!  Go, go; the drum is beating again.”