"Oh God! oh God! grant she may be dead. Have pity on me, Lord!" he sobbed that night, racked with insomnia and sad thoughts. The idea had shot through his mind that one of the brawling women who lived in the pink cottage might be his mother. He no longer however thought that, for the landlady when she brought his supper had told him particulars of the women which would not fit for Olì. But what matter? If she were not here, she was there; in some unknown but real place; at Cagliari, in Rome, somewhere, she was living or had been living, a life like that of the women whom the decent inhabitants of the Via S. Lucifero wanted to chase from their vicinity. "Why did Margherita write to me?" said Anania in anguish, "and why have I replied? _That woman_ will always stand between us. What have I been dreaming? To-morrow I must write to Margherita and tell her all." "But how can I tell her?" he asked, again turning and tossing on his bed. "And if _that woman_ is dead? Why must I renounce my happiness? Doesn't Margherita probably know about my birth? If it shocked her, she would not have written to me. Yes, but she thinks my mother is dead, or at any rate dead for me. While I _feel_ she is alive, and that it is my duty to seek her, and find her, and lift her out of hell. Perhaps she has reformed already. No, she hasn't. I am sure she hasn't! Oh, it's horrible! I hate her! I hate her, hate her! I'll murder her." Atrocious visions appeared before his eyes. He saw his mother brawling with other women of her own sort, with lurid and bestial men. He heard cries. He shook with hatred and disgust. At midnight he wept, smothering his sobs, biting the pillow, wringing his hands, tearing his breast. He snatched away the amulet Olì had given him on the day of their flight from Fonni, and flung it against the wall. Could he but tear out and hurl from him the whole memory of his mother!