"I do not see it, father; the season is not yet warm."
"Not warm! my veins feel heated to bursting. Thou forgettest this is the attic, and that these are the leads, and then the sun—oh! the sun! The illustrious senators do not bethink them of the pain of passing the bleak winter below the canals, and the burning summers beneath hot metal."
"They think of nothing but their power," murmured Jacopo—"that which is wrongfully obtained, must be maintained by merciless injustice—but why should we speak of this, father; hast thou all thy body needs?"
"Air—son, air!—give me of that air, which God has made for the meanest living thing."
The Bravo rushed towards those fissures in the venerable but polluted pile he had already striven to open, and with frantic force he endeavored to widen them with his hands. The material resisted, though blood flowed from the ends of his fingers in the desperate effort.
"The door, Gelsomina, open wide the door!" he cried, turning away from the spot, exhausted with his fruitless exertions.
"Nay, I do not suffer now, my child—it is when thou hast left me, and when I am alone with my own thoughts, when I see thy weeping mother and neglected sister, that I most feel the want of air—are we not in the fervid month of August, son?"
"Father, it is not yet June."
"I shall then have more heat to bear! God's will be done, and blessed Santa Maria, his mother undefiled!—give me strength to endure it."
The eye of Jacopo gleamed with a wildness scarcely less frightful than the ghastly look of the old man, his chest heaved, his fingers were clenched, and his breathing was audible.