'What is the matter?' he asked then.
'No, no!' she said, more by gesture than voice.
'Look, look—don't be frightened,' suggested the deluded man.
'Be silent!' she answered, shuddering. He held her up, waiting with a madman's patience that would wait for hours, days, months, years, provided the truth of his delusion were proved.
'Bianca darling,' the Marquis murmured, sometimes encouraging her tenderly. She answered with a sigh, that seemed a lamenting, suffering child's sob. Holding her against his breast, Formosa felt the strong rigidity of that young sickly frame shaken by long shivers. When she trembled all over, he felt the rebound. It seemed to him the implored revelation was imminent. He again said to her, obstinately, pitilessly, 'How do you feel?' She waved her hand, in an alarmed way, as if she wished to chase away a frightful thought or a dreadful vision. What did the agony of that young breast matter to him, the fatal want of balance in the nerves? In that chilly virginal room, a circle of light on the ceiling from the Virgin's lamp alone breaking the shadow, with the quivering form in his arms, the soul trembling before Divine mysteries, he felt it a solemn moment; time and space were not. He, Formosa, was facing at last the great mystery. From his innocent daughter's lips he would know his life's secret, his future: the fatal ciphers that contained his fortune—the spirit would tell Bianca Maria everything, and she would tell him.
'Bianca, Bianca, implore him to come and tell you whether we are to live or die. Pray to him, because he, the spirit, comes forth from the Divine, to tell you the divine word; pray to him, if he is here near you, or in you, if he is before your eyes or your fancy; pray to him, Bianca, pray to him. Our life is at stake. Save us, Bianca, save us!'...
He went on speaking, incoherently, invoking the spirit's presence, addressing the wildest, saddest prayers to her and to him. The girl, trembling, shivering, her teeth chattering with terror, clung on her father's neck, like a suffering child, fastened like a vice. She said no more, but it was evident the hour, the surroundings, and her father's voice increased her nervousness. A stifled sob came from her breast, and a very faint, constant lament, like a dying child's, from her lips. He spoke to her all the time, but when he got more urgent, almost wrathful in his sorrow, he felt her arms twitching with despair. Then gradually a change came. To begin with, Bianca's hands and forehead were, as usual, icy cold; she was so bloodless, she had lost her vital heat. Indeed, in that spasm the deluded old man had felt that her whole body was frozen. Suddenly, at intervals, when her teeth stopped chattering and her arms relaxed through debility, he felt a slight heat rising under the skin on her hands and up to her forehead. It seemed a current of heat spreading all through her young body, which filled her impoverished veins with warm blood, and made her forehead and hands burn. He beard her breathing get more distressed; sometimes her breast rose with a long sigh, as if she needed air. Twice he tried to put her head down on the pillow, but she gave a frightened shiver.
'Don't leave me alone, for the love of God!' she stammered, like a baby.
'I won't leave you. Tell me what you see,' he repeated, indomitable and implacable.