'Why not?'
'Because I would see the dead man, love—my love!' she said, still with that deep sadness that brought tears to the doctor's eyes.
'Dear, I swear to you that there is no dead man,' he replied again gently, as persistent as with a sick child.
In the meanwhile he tried to feel her pulse, and the temperature of her skin. Strange to say, while she seemed almost delirious, her hand was icy and the pulse was slow and feeble. It gave him a pang at the heart, for that want of life and strength showed him a continuous incurable wasting away. He would have liked to find out about that curious disease which made the blood so feeble and the nerves so irritable, but his heart loved Bianca Maria too well for his science to keep its clear-sightedness. He could not find out the secret of the impoverished blood or the disordered nerves; he only understood thus, darkly, that her constitution was wasting away from weakness and sensitiveness. He did not think of medicine or rare remedies; he just thought, in a confused way, he must save her—that was all. Ah, yes, he must snatch her at once from that madman's claws—this poor innocent girl that was subjected daily to being startled by this hopeless folly; he must take her away from that growing wretchedness of soul and body, from that fatal going downhill to sin and death—his poor darling who only knew how to suffer without rebellion or complaint. He must act at once; he was a man and a Christian. He must save this unhappy girl, as he so often had saved people from hydrophobia, or as, on one occasion, he had saved a wretched man who had got tetanus. At once—at once—he must save her, or he would not be in time. Where was the Marquis, then? Where was the cruel madman that staked his name, his honour, his daughter?
'Sir, it is done,' said Giovanni, putting in his head at the door. The old servant was very pale. After being relieved from the terrifying impression of what he thought was a murdered corpse, the serious insult his master had done to the Godhead came to disturb his humble religious conscience. That figure of the Redeemer, with the cord round His neck, hung down in the well, as if it was the mangled remains of a murdered man—to see that representation of the meek Jesus so scorned made him think that his master's reason had given way; such sacrilege must bring a curse on the house. He called out Margherita, to tell her what had happened, while the neighbours round about—on the stair, at the entrance, and in the shops—were going about saying that the Ecce Homo of Cavalcanti House had done a miracle, resuscitating a man that had been murdered, by putting Himself in his place. Everywhere, in different ways, they got lottery numbers out of the extraordinary event.
'The dead man, poor fellow!' the girl went on, half unconscious, the voice like a faint breath from her lips.
'Do not say that again, Bianca Maria. Believe what I say,' the doctor replied with gentle firmness. 'There was no dead man; it was the Ecce Homo statue.'
'Who was it?' she cried out, getting up and looking wildly at him.
He gave a start. He thought it was the crisis, her mind having wandered so long, so he repeated, trying to influence her by his steady gaze:
'It was the Ecce Homo figure. Your father flung it in the well, with a rope round its neck.'