The dear gray head, that had already bent over two blessed cradles before for the same caresses, and much whiter now, bent unconsciously over another's child, over the intruder. I imagined that she had not shown herself as tender toward Maria, toward Natalia, toward the true creatures of my blood.
She wished to swathe him herself. She made the sign of the cross on the abdomen.
"But you are not yet a Christian!"
And turning toward me, she said:
"The time has come to fix the baptismal day."
XXXVI.
Dr. Jemma, chevalier of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem, a handsome, cheerful old man, brought a bouquet of white chrysanthemums as an offering to Juliana.
"Oh! my favorite flowers!" said Juliana. "Thank you."
She took the bouquet, gazed on it for a long time, buried her tapering fingers in it; and there was a sad analogy between her pallor and that of the autumn flowers. They were chrysanthemums as large as full-blown roses, tufted, heavy; they had the color of a sickly, bloodless, almost lifeless skin, the livid whiteness noticeable on the cheeks of beggars benumbed by cold. A few were imperceptibly veined with violet, others were slightly tinged with yellow, with exquisite tones.
"Take them," she said to me. "Put them in water."