Allegories; Frame stories; Plague -- Europe -- History -- Fiction; Storytelling -- Fiction
At first she was lost in wonder,
then with a sudden suspicion of the truth she bent her eyes seaward, and
there saw the galley still at no great distance, towing the ship in her
wake. Thus apprehending beyond all manner of doubt that she had lost her
sons as well as her husband, and that, alone, desolate and destitute, she
might not hope, that any of her lost ones would ever be restored to her, she
fell down on the shore in a swoon with the names of her husband and sons
upon her lips. None was there to administer cold water or aught else that
might recall her truant powers; her animal spirits might even wander
whithersoever they would at their sweet will: strength, however, did at last
return to her poor exhausted frame, and therewith tears and lamentations,
as, plaintively repeating her sons' names, she roamed in quest of them from
cavern to cavern. Long time she sought them thus; but when she saw that her
labour was in vain, and that night was closing in, hope, she knew not why,
began to return, and with it some degree of anxiety on her own account.
Wherefore she left the shore and returned to the cavern where she had been
wont to indulge her plaintive mood. She passed the night in no small fear
and indescribable anguish; the new day came, and, as she had not supped, she
was fain after tierce to appease her hunger, as best she could, by a
breakfast of herbs: this done, she wept and began to ruminate on her future
way of life. While thus engaged, she observed a she-goat come by and go into
an adjacent cavern, and after a while come forth again and go into the wood:
thus roused from her reverie she got up, went into the cavern from which the
she-goat had issued, and there saw two kids, which might have been born that
very day, and seemed to her the sweetest and the most delicious things in
the world: and, having, by reason of her recent delivery, milk still within
her, she took them up tenderly, and set them to her breast. They, nothing
loath, sucked at her teats as if she had been their own dam; and thenceforth
made no distinction between her and the dam. Which caused the lady to feel
that she had found company in the desert; and so, living on herbs and water,
weeping as often as she bethought her of her husband and sons and her past
life, she disposed herself to live and die there, and became no less
familiar with the she-goat than with her young.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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