"Let us go out, Federico."
I left hastily. Federico followed me.
"Juliana is very ill. I cannot understand how any one can think of anything else but her now," I said, as if to justify myself. "You have not seen her. She looks as if she were dying."
XXXIII.
For several days Juliana hovered between life and death. Her weakness was so great that the slightest effort was followed by exhaustion. She was compelled to remain constantly on her back, without the slightest movement. The least attempt to raise herself provoked symptoms of cerebral anemia. Nothing could be found to overcome the nauseas that seized her, to lift the weight that crushed down on her chest, to remove the buzzing that she heard without cease.
I remained day and night at her bedside, always on the watch, sustained by an indefatigable energy that surprised even myself. I employed all the strength of my own life in sustaining that life which was threatened with extinction. It seemed to me that, from the other side of the bed, death was watching, ready to profit by an opportune moment to ravish his prey. At times I had the real sensation that I was becoming transfused in the debilitated body of the invalid, that I communicated to her a little of my strength, that I imparted an impulse to her exhausted heart. Never did the miseries of illness inspire in me the least repugnance, the slightest disgust; never did any material object offend the delicacy of my senses. My senses, overexcited, were attentive only in perceiving the least changes in the condition of the invalid. Before she spoke a word, before she made a sign, I divined her desires, her wants, the degree of her suffering. By divination, without the physician having to make any suggestion, I had succeeded in being able to discover new and ingenious means of relieving one of her pains, of calming one of her attacks. I alone could persuade her to eat and to sleep. I resorted to every stratagem, to prayers and caresses to make her swallow her medicine. I pressed her so much that finally, incapable of further resistance, she had to submit to a salutary effort to triumph over the nausea. And there was nothing sweeter to me than the imperceptible smile with which she submitted to my will. Her slightest acts of obedience put my heart into a profound commotion. When she said, in her feeble voice: "Is this right? Am I good?" I felt my throat choke, my eyes become veiled.
She often complained of a painful and incessant throbbing at the temples. Then I would pass my finger-tips over her brow to appease the pain. I caressed her hair very softly to lull her to sleep. When I perceived that she was asleep her respiration gave me the illusory sensation that I was solaced, as if the benefit of the slumber were extended even to me. In presence of this slumber I felt a sort of religious emotion. I was invaded by a vague fervor. I felt a desire to believe in the existence of some superior being, omnispective, omnipotent, in order to address my Prayers to him. There arose spontaneously from the depths of my soul the preludes of prayer according to the Christian formula. Sometimes the inner eloquence exalted me even to the summit of the true faith. Within me there awoke all the mystic tendencies transmitted to me by a long line of Catholic ancestors.
While my inner orisons were unfolding I contemplated the sleeper. She was still as pale as her night-dress. The transparency of her skin would have enabled me to count the veins on her cheeks, on her chin, on her neck. I watched her as if I had had the hope of seeing the beneficial effects of that repose, the slow diffusion of new blood engendered by the nourishment, the first premonitory signs of cure. I would have liked, by some supernatural faculty, to be present at the mysterious restorative elaboration which was taking place in that enfeebled body. And I persisted in hoping: "When she awakes she will feel stronger."
She seemed to feel a great relief when she held my hand in her own icy hands. Sometimes she took my hand and put it on the pillow, pressed her cheek against it with a childlike gesture, and gradually dozed off in that position. So as not to awaken her, I exerted all my strength to keep for a long, long time my arm in this one position, which was torture.
Once she said: