"I'll go and see."
"Why do you want to put a pain in your heart?" asked Candia.
He turned quickly into the path, took a short cut to the beach, walked along the edge of the sea. On arriving at the place of the accident, he was panting a little. He asked:
"What has happened?"
The assembled peasants saluted him, making room for him. One of them answered, calm:
"It's the son of a mother, who's been drowned."
Another, clothed in linen, who appeared to be in charge of the corpse, stooped, and raised the cloth.
The little body appeared, inert, stretched on the hard beach. It was the body of a child of eight or nine, a thin and frail blond. For a pillow, they had put beneath his head his poor rags rolled up in a bundle: his shirt, blue breeches, red belt, soft felt hat. His face was scarcely livid, with a snub nose, prominent forehead, very long eyelashes, a half-open mouth with large, violet-colored lips between which showed the white teeth, spaced one from another. His neck was thin, flaccid, like a withered stem, marked with tiny folds. The tendons of the arm were weak; the arms were slender, covered with a down like the fine feathers that cover a newly hatched bird. His ribs were prominent and distinct; a darker line divided the skin in the middle of the chest; the umbilicus protruded like a knot. The feet, a little swollen, had the same yellowish color as the hands; and the small hands were callous, covered with warts, with white nails that were beginning to turn livid. On the left arm, on the thighs near the groin, and lower down, on the knees, along the limbs, reddish spots appeared. All the particularities of this miserable body assumed an extraordinary significance in George's eyes, immobilized as they were, and fixed forever in the rigidity of death.
"How did he get drowned? Where?" he asked in a low voice.
The man clad in linen began, not without some signs of impatience, the story, that, doubtless, he had already repeated too often. He had a square, bestial face, hairy eyebrows, and a broad, hard, fierce mouth. The story he told was as follows: