"Leave him alone! I am his mother, I gave him life and I must feed him."
She was fair to look upon, and more than one man sought her love, but unsuccessfully. To one whom she liked more than the rest she said:
"I cannot be your wife; I am afraid of giving birth to another freak; you would be ashamed. No, go away!"
The man tried to persuade her, reminded her of the Madonna, who is just to mothers and looks upon them as her sisters, but the freak's mother replied to him:
"I don't know what I am guilty of, but I have been cruelly punished."
He implored, wept, raged; and finally she said:
"One cannot do what one does not believe to be right. Go away!"
He went away to a far-off place and she never saw him again.
And so for many years she filled the insatiable jaws, which chewed incessantly. He devoured the fruits of her toil, her blood, her life; his head grew and became more terrible, until it seemed ready to break away from the thin weak neck and to rise in the air like a balloon; one could imagine it in its course knocking against the corners of houses, and swaying lazily from side to side.
All who looked into the yard stopped involuntarily and shuddered, unable to understand what they saw. Near the vine-covered wall, propped up on stones, as on an altar, was a box, out of which rose a head, showing up clearly against the background of foliage. The yellow, freckled, wrinkled face, with its high cheekbones, and vacant eyes starting out of their sockets, impressed itself on the memory of all who saw it; the broad flat nostrils quivered, the abnormally developed cheek-bones and jaws worked monotonously, the fleshy lips hung loose, disclosing two rows of ravenous teeth; the large projecting ears, like those of an animal, seemed to lead a separate existence. And this awful visage was crowned by a mass of black hair growing in small, close curls, like the wool of a negro.