"Listen. Your fever is increasing. Begin to undress. Come, come."
With a tenderness that recalled that of my mother, he assisted me to undress. He helped me to get into bed. Seated at my bedside, he felt my forehead from time to time, to judge of my fever; and as he saw that I still trembled, he asked:
"Are you very cold? Does not your shivering cease at all? Shall I cover you more? Are you thirsty?"
Shivering, I thought: "Suppose I had spoken! Suppose I had had the strength to keep on! Was it I, positively I, who, with my own lips, spoke those words? Was it absolutely I? And suppose Federico, on thinking them over, on deeply reflecting, began to suspect? I asked: 'Do you know who killed this innocent?' Nothing more. But had I not the aspect of an assassin about to confess? On thinking it over, Federico could not fail to ask himself: 'What did he want to say? Against whom did he direct that strange accusation?' My excitement will seem equivocal. The doctor ... He must think: 'Perhaps he alluded to the doctor.' He must have some new proof of my exaltation, he must continue to believe my mind deranged by fever, in a condition of intermittent delirium." While I reasoned thus, rapid and clear visions passed through my mind, with evidence of real and tangible things. "I am feverish, and very strongly so. What if true delirium should set in, what if I unconsciously revealed my secret?"
I watched over myself with frightful anguish.
I said: "The doctor, the doctor—did not know..."
My brother bent over me, felt my forehead again uneasily, emitted a sigh.
"Do not worry, Tullio. Be quiet."
And he went and wrung out a linen in cold water, and applied it to my burning head.
The procession of rapid and clear visions continued. I saw again the baby's agony with terrible intensity. He was agonizing in his cradle. His face was ashen, so pallid that the milk crusts above the eyebrows appeared yellow. The lower lip, depressed, was invisible. From time to time he raised his eyelids, that were lightly tinted with violet, and one would have thought that the irides were adherent because they followed the ascending movement and lost themselves beneath, leaving a view only of the opaque whites. From time to time the choking death rattle was interrupted. At one time the doctor said, as if to make a supreme attempt: