I bent over her, and we spoke in low tones:
"It is very serious."
"Very serious?"
"Yes, very serious."
"Is he dying?"
"Who knows? Perhaps."
With a sudden movement, she disengaged her arms and threw them around my neck. My cheek pressed against hers; and I felt her tremble, I felt the leanness of her poor, sickly bosom. And, while she embraced me, I had before my mind the sinister vision of the distant room; I saw the child with his faded, lifeless, opaque eyes and livid lips; I saw my mother's tears flowing. There was no joy in that embrace. My heart was oppressed; and my soul, bent thus over the obscure abyss of that other soul, felt helpless and alone.
XLIX.
By night-time Raymond was dead. All the indications of acute poisoning by carbonic acid appeared on the little body that had become a corpse. The little face was livid and leaden; the nose was pinched; the lips had taken on a dark blue color; a glimpse of the opaque whiteness could be caught beneath the still half-closed eyelids; on one thigh, near the groin, was a reddish spot. It seemed as if decomposition had already set in, so lamentable was the appearance of that infantile flesh, which, a few hours before, all rosy and tender, had been caressed by my mother's fingers.
In my ears resounded the cries, the sobs, the distracted words ejaculated by my mother, while Federico and the women led her out of the room.