"Hush! Patience! Don't be disowning the Lord's bounty, my son. Suppose you had stayed here--what would have become of you? You might have ended vilely--as a monk, a begging monk, a cowardly monk! Ah--don't let us speak of it! Better to die than to end like that! And your mother would have followed her own life just the same, because it was her destiny. Even here, before she went away, do you suppose she was a saint? No, she wasn't. Well! well! it was her destiny. For the last part of the time she was here, she had a _carabiniere_ for a lover. He was transferred to Nuraminis a few days before she took you away. After she had left you--at least so the poor thing told me--she walked on foot to Nuraminis, hiding by day, walking at night, half across Sardinia. She joined the _carabiniere_ and they lived together for a while. He had promised to marry her; but on the contrary he got tired, ill-treated her, beat, impoverished, finally abandoned her. She followed her fated path. She told me, and poor dear, she cried so as to move the stones!--she told me she was always looking for work, but never could get any. I tell you, it's Fate! It's Fate which robs some poor creatures of work, just as it robs others of reason, health, goodness. It's useless for the man or the woman to rebel. No! on to the death, on to the crack of doom, but follow the thread which draws you! Well! at last she did do a little better. She joined the blind singer, and they lived for two years as man and wife. She led him about, to the country feasts, from one place to another. They always went on foot, sometimes alone, sometimes in companies of other wandering beggars. The blind man sang songs of his own composition. He had a lovely voice. Here he sang a song which made everybody cry. It was called "_The Death of the King_." The Municipio gave him twenty _lire_, and the Rector had him to dinner. In the three days he was here he got more than twenty crowns. The wretch! He too had promised to marry the poor soul; but instead, when he found she was ill and couldn't drag herself further, he also deserted her, fearing he'd have to spend money in getting her cured. They went away together from here to the Feast of St Elia; there the horrid man met a company of mendicants from Campidano, going to the Feast at Gallura. He went off with them leaving the poor creature, sick to death with fever, in a shepherd's hut. Afterwards as I told you, she got a little better and went here and there harvesting, lavender-picking, until the fever broke her down completely. But a few days ago she sent to tell me she was better----" A shudder, vainly repressed, ran through Anania's limbs. What wretchedness, what shame, what grief! What iniquity, human and divine! None of the sad and blood-stained tales, related to him in his infancy by this same rough woman, had ever seemed so terrible as this, had ever made him tremble as did this.