He strained his ears sometimes, as if the noises that came to him were to tell him that his daughter was getting better, that the doctor was giving her strong, effective remedies; but, except for the servants, the assistant, and the doctor going about their work, he heard nothing else but the constant agonizing cry: 'I will not die! I will not die! Love, save me!'
He sank into a slumber, with his old head resting on his arms, towards dawn, still hearing in this slight unconsciousness that same cry of anguish. It was Giovanni who wakened him, at full daylight, by bringing him a cup of coffee. The father, turned out of his daughter's room, questioned the servant with his eyes.
'She is still in the same state—just the same.'
'Then, not even Amati can save her—not even him?'
'He is trying to, but he is in despair.'
The Marquis di Formosa spent three days and nights in that room alone, not seeing a bed and hardly touching the little food that was brought in for the three days and nights that Bianca Maria's dying agony lasted. The old man's face, always of a reddish tinge, in spite of his age, was now streaked with purple, his white hair, when Giovanni and Margherita came to him, was tragically disordered. Only, from seeing their crushed state, he asked them no more questions. Did he not hear her still raving, crying out that at her age she did not want to die, she would not die, adding the most heartrending supplications and cries?
The two servants told him nothing; his hearing had got more acute, and not a word of the raving went past unheard. Still, that very vitality of nervous strength, that strong voice, deluded him as being a sort of health, and in the short intervals of silence he almost wished the raving would begin again. But the third day, in the morning, a new painful sensation drew him out of that stupor. The delirious girl, in a choked voice, was calling for her mother, begging her not to let her die. Sometimes she stopped speaking; he looked round him, alarmed at these sudden silences, which got longer, starting when again Bianca Maria began to cry out:
'Mother, I will not die! I will not—I will not, mother dear!'
About two hours after midnight, on the third day, still seated by his small table, slumber came upon him, with the raving still echoing in his ears. How long did he sleep? When he wakened, the silence was so profound that it frightened him. He waited to hear the voice crying out not to die yet. There was nothing. He counted the time from the wasting of the candle; two hours must have gone by.