"Yes, call him, so we may return to Casalbordino. I will drink there. I can wait. Let us go."
She leaned on George's arm. They remounted the hill. Arrived at the top, they saw once more the plain swarming with people, the white huts, the reddish edifice. Around the twisted trunks of the olive-trees still stood, ever motionless, the melancholy forms of the beasts of burden. Near them, in the same shade where they had previously sought a refuge, an old woman was seated, who, to all appearances, seemed to be a centenarian; she, also, was motionless, her hands placed on her knees, the fleshless limbs only partly covered by her petticoat. Her white hair hung down the sides of her waxen cheeks; the mouth, without lips, resembled a deep furrow; her eyes were sealed forever beneath the corroded eyelids; her entire air expressed a reminiscence of innumerable pains.
"Is she dead?" asked Hippolyte in a whisper, stopping, seized by fear and respect.
The multitude was pushing about the Sanctuary. The processions whirled around chanting, beneath the cruel sun. One of these processions came from under the great portal and turned towards the open space, preceded by its cross-bearer. Arrived at the edge of the esplanade, men and women stopped and turned towards the church in a half-circle, the women squatting, the men upright, the cross-bearer in the centre. They prayed and crossed themselves. Then they sent towards the church a great, simultaneous cry—the last salutation. And they resumed then way, intoning the hymn:
Viva Maria!
Viva Maria!
The old woman did not change her attitude. Something great, terrible, and indefinitely supernatural emanated from her solitary old age in the shadow of the arid and almost petrified olive-tree whose cleft trunk seemed marked by a bolt from heaven. If she still lived, her eyes at least did not see, her ears no longer heard, all her senses were obliterated. Yet she had the appearance of a Witness who was looking towards the invisible region of eternity. "Death is not as mysterious as this remnant of life in this human ruin," thought George. And at the same time there arose in his mind, accompanied by an extraordinary emotion, the vague image of a very ancient myth. "Why dost thou not awaken the Mother secular who sleeps on the threshold of Death? In her slumber resides the first Science. Why dost thou not interrogate the wise earthly Mother?" Vague words, the obscure fragments of ancient epics, awoke in his memory; indefinite lines and symbols swayed and enveloped him.
"Let us go, George," said Hippolyte, shaking him lightly, after an interval of pensive silence. "How sad everything is here!"
Her voice was weak, and in her eyes was that sad shadow in which her lover read an inexpressible horror and disgust. He dared not encourage her, for fear she would feel in his encouragements the preoccupation of the horrible menace that seemed to hang over her, since the moment that she had seen the epileptic fall in the crowd.
But, a few steps farther on, she stopped again, choked by incoercible anguish, strangled by a knot of sobs that she could not untie. She looked at her lover, then gazed about her, distracted.
"My God, my God! What sorrow!"