"Donna Luisa," said he gently, "here is your uncle, who is coming to beseech you——"
The old man staggered as he came forward, although his face was composed. He advanced a few steps and then stopped. Luisa was seated upon the bed with her dead baby in her arms, holding her tight, kissing her face and neck, and uttering long, heart-rending groans as she pressed her lips to the little body.
"Yes, yes, yes," she was saying, with almost a smile of tenderness in her voice. "It is your uncle, dear, your uncle, who is coming to see his little treasure, his little Maria, his little Missipipì, who loves him so much! Yes, yes, yes!"
"Luisa," said Uncle Piero, "you must control yourself. Everything that could be done has been done. Now come with me—don't remain here any longer—come with me."
"Uncle, Uncle!" cried Luisa, in a voice full of tenderness but without looking towards him, while she pressed the little dead body to her breast and rocked backwards and forwards. "Come here! Come here to your Maria! Come! Come to us, for you are our uncle, our dear uncle! No, dear, no, dear! Our uncle will not forsake us."
Uncle Piero shuddered. His grief overwhelmed him for a moment, and wrenched a sob from him.
"Let her rest!" he murmured in a stifled voice. She did not appear to hear him, and continued: "We will go to our uncle, dear, you and I. Do you want to go to him, Maria? Yes, yes! Let us go!" She slid from the bed to the floor and went to Uncle Piero. Clutching her sweet, dead burden to her breast with one arm, she threw the other about the old man's neck, and whispered: "A kiss, a kiss, for your little Missipipì. One kiss, only one!"
Uncle Piero bent down and kissed the little face, already sadly ravaged by death, wetting it with two great tears.
"Look, look, Uncle!" she said. "Doctor, bring the candle! Yes, yes! Don't be cruel, doctor. Look, Uncle! See what a little treasure she is, doctor!"
Aliprandi hesitated, and tried to resist her appeals, but in this mad grief there was something sacred, something that must be respected. He obeyed, and raising the candle, held it close to the tiny corpse, that was intensely pitiful with its half-open eyes and dilated pupils, this little corpse that had once been Maria, sweet little Missipipì, the old man's delight, the smile and the love of the house.