She half-opened her arms, but this wraith of the mother, he remembered, frightened the child, who clung sobbing to his father.
Marina fell back with a cry of grief, struggling for the words which came slowly—her first connected speech since her illness. "It is the curse! It parts even mothers and children!"
A strange strength seemed to have come to her; a sudden light gleamed in her eyes; she turned from one to the other, as if seeking some one in authority to answer her question, and fixed upon Santorio's as the strongest face.
"The official acts of a Pope are infallible?" she questioned, with feverish insistence, after the first futile attempt to speak. "The Holy Father who succeeds him may not undo his acts of mercy?"
"Yes, yes, it is true," Santorio assented, waiting eagerly for the sequence.
A little color had crept into her cheeks; her hands were burning; they grasped the physician's arm like a vise; the change was alarming.
"The edict cannot hurt my baby! Santissima Maria, thou hast saved him!"
she cried. "For he hath the special blessing of his Holiness Pope
Clement, and our Holy Father cannot reach him with this curse of
Venice!"
"We cannot keep her mind from it," said Santorio, aside to Marcantonio; "it is essential to calm it with the right view—no argument, it might induce the most dangerous excitement. Send for some bishop or theologian who takes the right view; let him present it as a fact, and with authority; her life depends upon it."
He leaned down to his patient in deep commiseration to tell her that all was well—that Venice was under no ban, that God's blessing still shielded her churches and her children; but she raised her eyes steadily to his, and the strength of the belief, which he saw clearly written within them, filled him with awe and hushed his speech. How was it possible to make her understand!
"Nay," said Marina faintly, still holding him with her sad, solemn eyes, "do not speak. Since Fra Francesco comes no more there is but one who speaketh truth to me. It is the vision of my beautiful Mater Dolorosa of San Donato, which leaveth me not."