"Do not come in! Do not disturb her! Do you want to kill her?"
Juliana looked like a dead woman. She was whiter than her pillow and motionless. My mother bent over her to place a compress in position. The doctor, calmly and methodically, was preparing an internal lotion. His face looked anxious, but his hands did not tremble. A basin of boiling water was steaming in a corner. Cristina was pouring water from a pitcher into a second basin, in which she held a thermometer. Another woman carried into an adjoining room a package of cotton. In the air was an odor of ammonia and of vinegar.
The slightest details of that scene, taken in at one glance, were impressed on me indelibly.
"Fifty degrees, mind," said the doctor, turning toward Cristina.
As I heard no wailing I looked about me. Some one was missing in the room.
"Where's the baby?" I asked, trembling.
"He's there, in the other room," replied the doctor. "Go and see him, and stay there."
I pointed to Juliana with a gesture of despair.
"Have no fear. Hand me the water, Cristina."
I entered the other room. My ears caught a feeble wail, scarcely perceptible. I saw on a layer of cotton a reddish-looking little body, violet-colored in spots, and whose back and the soles of the feet were being rubbed by the midwife's dry hands.