'How is she?' he asked.
'Just the same,' she sighed out.
'What does the doctor say?'
'He orders ice and quinine. He again asked for Dr. Amati to be sent for.'
'I told you never to mention that scoundrel's name!'
'Hush!' she hissed out respectfully, and she went away.
The Marquis was seized by so profound an anguish that, the old faith rising again in his heart, he sought for a place to kneel down and pray the Lord that He would save his daughter, and free him from that agony. Alas! the small room used as a chapel at first, where Bianca Maria and he had prayed together so often, was empty: he, after having abused the saints and the Virgin, after having done the sacrilege of punishing Ecce Homo, had sold the saints, Virgin, and Ecce Homo to stake the money at the lottery. There were no more guardian saints in Cavalcanti House; the Virgin and her Divine Son had withdrawn their saddened eyes from insult. There was nothing left in that house, nothing. During these last days, throughout the poor girl's illness, they had lived on alms; that is to say, off some allowance inexhaustible pity of Gennaro Parascandolo the usurer's wife had granted to Margherita and Giovanni's tears and entreaties.
The Cavalcantis were holding out their hands for alms now! For many weeks he had had no money to stake, and he avoided Don Crescenzio's lottery bank, as he had not the many francs he owed him to give back; but when Friday came, though he knew they were reduced to private begging, knowing that what he did was a domestic crime, he came to Margherita to implore her to give him two francs, or only one, to gamble with. Only on that Friday, confronted by Bianca Maria's illness, he had not dared; he was struck incurably. That girlish body, stretched on what perhaps might be her death-bed; that head crushed down under the heavy bag of ice; that profile, pinched as if it was rubbed down by an inward hand; that eyebrow, that frowned on hearing his voice only; and that hand, that hand above all, that chased him away constantly, obstinately, a victim to a dumb, lively horror—all that had broken down the last energies of his old age.
Illnesses of old people make the old thoughtful and melancholy, but young people's illnesses frighten them as a thing against the order of Nature. Ah! in these moments of anguish, he felt so weak, so old, so worn-out, an organism with no vitality, a lamp with no oil. And shaking, trembling, not even looking towards his daughter's bed, he went to sit in his usual place, letting himself go, as if he had to sit there and wait for death.
Only one thing could give him back a flash of energy—that is to say, a flash of hatred—and it was the name of the loathed doctor, which was repeated from time to time by the new doctor or mentioned by his own servants, who referred to him in spite of his express orders against it. She, Bianca Maria, had never mentioned it. In the doleful convulsions that had come on before that typhoid she had raved at great length, cried out over and over again, calling for her mother, 'Mama, mama!' like a child in danger, like a lost child; nothing else. Vainly in these low ravings, in that confused muttering, that long, disconnected chatter, he had stretched his ears to hear his own name or the scoundrel's who had taken his daughter's heart from him. She had always called for her mother, no one else. And he trembled, shivered, in case of hearing that name coming from her lips, still keeping up in his old age and tiredness, in his growing weakness, that dull rage, that implacable hatred. Sometimes, when the delirium got higher and higher and haunted him, he ran away from the room, stopping his ears, always fearing she would call on that name. Outside he stood thus, waiting, undecided, and very agitated.