“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.”

Zorrillo fancied she was uttering mere feverish ravings, and begged her to calm herself; then he left the tent, and went to the place where the election was to be held.

As soon as Flora was alone, she threw herself on her knees before the Madonna’s picture, but knew not whether it would be right to pray that her son might obtain an office, which had proved the ruin of so many; and when she besought the Virgin to give her strength to leave her lover, it seemed to her like treason to Pasquale.

Her thoughts grew confused, and she could not pray.  Her mobile mind wandered swiftly from lofty to petty things; she seized the cards to see whether fate would unite her to Zorrillo or to Ulrich, and the red ten, which represented herself, lay close beside the green knave, Pasquale.  She angrily threw them down, determined, in spite of the oracle, to follow her son.