“He said even--” He did not dare to continue now, and he lowered his head. “He said what, my son?” “Well, that--that it was hard to put her in prison there--that perhaps--that, even now, if she saw me, he was not far from thinking--” She straightened under the shock of what she had just suspected; with her thin hands she parted her hair, newly whitened, and her eyes became again young and sharp, in an expression almost wicked from joy, from avenged pride: “He said that, he!--” “Would you forgive me, mother--if I tried?” She took his two hands and they remained silent, not daring, with their scruples as Catholics, to utter the sacrilegious thing which was fomenting in their heads. In the depth of her eyes, the evil spark went out. “Forgive you?” she said in a low voice, “Oh, I--you know very well that I would.--But do not do this, my son, I pray you, do not do it; it would bring misfortune to both of you!--Do not think of it, my Ramuntcho, never think of it--” Then, they hushed, hearing the steps of the physician who was coming up for his daily visit. And it was the only time, the supreme time when they were to talk of it in life. But Ramuntcho knew now that, even after death, she would not condemn him for having attempted, or for having committed it: and this pardon was sufficient for him, and, now that he felt sure of obtaining it, the greatest barrier, between his sweetheart and him, had now suddenly fallen. CHAPTER VI. In the evening, when the fever returned, she seemed already much more dangerously affected. On her robust body, the malady had violently taken hold,--the malady recognized too late, and insufficiently nursed because of her stubbornness as a peasant, because of her incredulous disdain for physicians and medicine. And little by little, in Ramuntcho, the frightful thought of losing her installed itself in a dominant place; during the hours of watchfulness spent near her bed, silent and alone, he was beginning to face the reality of that separation, the horror of that death and of that burial,--even all the lugubrious morrows, all the aspects of his future life: the house which he would have to sell before quitting the country; then, perhaps, the desperate attempt at the convent of Amezqueta; then the departure, probably solitary and without desire to return, for unknown America-- The idea also of the great secret which she would carry with her forever,--of the secret of his birth,--tormented him more from hour to hour. Then, bending over her, and, trembling, as if he were about to commit an impious thing in a church, he dared to say: “Mother!--Mother, tell me now who my father is!”