"He fainted also from loss of blood. I had him carried to Horeli."
I wanted to inquire about Hania and my mother, but I felt that consciousness was leaving me again. I thought that black and yellow dogs were dancing on their hind legs around my bed, and I looked at them. Then again I seemed to hear the sounds of village fifes; at moments, instead of the clock which hung opposite my bed, I saw a face look out of the wall and draw back again. That was not a condition of complete unconsciousness, but of fever and a scattering of thought; but it must have lasted rather long.
At times I was a little better, and then I half recognized the faces around my bed,—now my father, now the priest, now Kazio, now Doctor Stanislav. I remember that among those faces was lacking one. I could not make out which; but I know that I felt that lack, and I sought that face instinctively.
One night when I had slept very soundly, I woke toward morning. The lights were burning on the table. I was very, very weak. All at once I discerned a person bent over the bed whom I did not know at first, but at sight of whom I felt as well as if I had died and was taken into heaven. That was a kind of angelic face; but so angelic, so sacred, kind, with tears flowing out of its eyes, that I felt as though I were preparing to weep. Then a spark of consciousness returned to me; it grew bright in my eyes; and I called weakly in a low voice,—
"Mamma!"
The angelic face bent to my emaciated hand, lying motionless on the coverlet, and pressed lips to it. I tried to raise myself, but felt pain again in my temples; hence I exclaimed only,—
"Mamma! it pains!"
My mother, for it was she, had begun to change the bandages with ice, which were on my head. That process had caused me no little suffering; but now those sweet, beloved hands with careful delicacy began to move around my poor slashed head, so that, not feeling the least pain, I whispered,—
"Pleasant! Oh, pleasant!"
Thenceforward I had more consciousness; only toward evening I fell into a fever; then I saw Hania, though when I was conscious I never saw her near me. But I saw her always in some danger. At one time a wolf with red eyes was rushing at her; again some one was carrying her away,—as it were, Selim, as it were, not Selim, but with a face grown over with black bristles and with horns on his head. Then I cried out sometimes; and sometimes I begged that wolf, or that horned one, very politely and humbly, not to carry her away. At those moments my mother placed her hands on my forehead, and the evil visions vanished immediately.