They said no more. Bianca Maria's pallid cheeks had got some colour, her eyes shone; her whole heart had been poured out as she spoke, now she kept silence. She had said everything. The bitter secret that implacably tortured her whole existence, on being evoked by love, had come out and had given a shudder of alarmed astonishment to the strong man listening. He said nothing, trying to keep down his own amazement, to arrange his confused ideas. He was accustomed, certainly, to hear lugubrious stories of all kinds of misery, both of body and mind, from his patients; he had lifted the veil from all kinds of shame and corruption; the sorrowful and contrite came to him as to a confessor, and hearts that hid the most horrifying secrets of humanity opened to him. But Bianca's sorrow was so profound, the very source of life being attacked, that it frightened him to see such unutterable wretchedness. Also this girl, wasted by an obscure, unnatural malady, tortured by her own father, that lovely, dear creature, was the woman he loved, that he could not live without, whose happiness was dearer to him than his own. Disturbed, not knowing yet how to set to work before that complicated problem of sickness and delusion, that made the Marquis di Formosa the family destroyer, he found nothing to say to comfort Bianca.
She was worn out now; she felt a vague remorse at having accused her father. But was not Amati to deliver her? Did she not feel quite safe, strong, when he was there? Rousing herself from her exhaustion, she raised her eyes to his timidly, humbly, saying:
'You don't think me bad and ungrateful, do you?'
'No, dear, I do not.'
'Do not judge badly of him.'
'I will cure him,' he said thoughtfully.
CHAPTER XII
THE THREE SISTERS—CHIARASTELLA THE WITCH
The summer of that year was a bad one for the Neapolitans, morally and materially. Above all, from the end of June the summer scirocco had gone on dissolving into rain; storms covered the bay with black clouds, lightning played behind Posillipo, thunder rumbled from Capodimonte, sudden heavy summer showers raised a pungent smell of dust, and went rushing down the city roads from the hill to the sea like little waterspouts, making the passers-by start aside and run. The poor cabmen, with no umbrellas, ragged, with shabby hats crushed down on their heads, could do nothing but stick their hands in the pockets of their worn-out jackets and keep their heads down. It was a devilish summer, a real correction from God; that was why San Gennaro had been so long in working the miracle that year. He makes no mistakes.