In the room lay two corpses, the mother and the child.
Bitter lamentations resounded through the house.
The father and the grandfather came hurrying along.
Howling and screaming like some wild beast never seen before, the father flung himself upon his dead, turning frantically from the mother to the child, and from the child to the mother, kissing and squeezing them constantly. And then he pressed them to his bosom and literally howled like one beyond the reach of the mercy of God.
But the grandfather groped his way along in silence, looking in his white nightdress and his dishevelled silvery locks like some spectral thing.
He could not speak. His palsied tongue could not utter a single cry for the relief of his agony. He knelt down in front of the dead bodies and raised his eyes aloft. Oh! how he strove to give expression to his grief, to utter one word, if only one, which might pierce Heaven itself. But he could not. He was dumb, his mouth moved as if it would speak, but his tongue was tied.
Oh! how much this family must have sinned, to suffer so much.