Hastening down the narrow lane, he descended by a short cut to the beach, and continued along the water. Reaching the spot, somewhat out of breath, he inquired:--
"What has happened?"
The assembled peasants saluted him and made way for him. One of them answered tranquilly:--
"The son of a mother has been drowned."
Another, clad in linen, who seemed to be standing guard over the corpse, bent down and drew aside the sheet.
The inert little body was revealed, extended upon the unyielding sand. It was a lad, eight or nine years old, fair and frail, with slender limbs. His head was supported on his few humble garments, rolled up in place of pillow,--the shirt, the blue trousers, the red sash, the cap of limp felt. His face was but slightly livid, with flat nose, prominent forehead, and long, long lashes; the mouth was half open, with thick lips which were turning blue, between which the widely spaced teeth gleamed white. His neck was slender, flaccid as a wilted stem, and seamed with tiny creases. The jointure of the arms at the shoulder looked feeble. The arms themselves were fragile, and covered with a down similar to the fine plumage which clothes the bodies of newly hatched birds. The whole outline of the ribs was distinctly visible; down the middle of the breast the skin was divided by a darker line; the navel stood out, like a knot. The feet, slightly bloated, had assumed the same sallow color as the little hands, which were callous and strewn with warts, with white nails beginning to turn livid. On the left arm, on the thighs near the groin, and further down, on the knees and along the legs, appeared reddish blotches of scurf. Every detail of this wretched little body assumed, in the eyes of Giorgio, an extraordinary significance, immobile as it was and fixed forever in the rigidity of death.
"How was he drowned? Where?" he questioned, lowering his voice.
The man dressed in linen gave, with some show of impatience, the account which he had probably had to repeat too many times already. He had a brutal countenance, square-cut, with bushy brows, and a large mouth, harsh and savage. Only a little while after leading the sheep back to their stalls, the lad, taking his breakfast along with him, had gone down, together with a comrade, to bathe. He had hardly set foot in the water, when he had fallen and was drowned. At the cries of his comrade, some one from the house overhead on the bluff had hurried down, and wading in up to the knees, had dragged him from the water half dead; they had turned him upside down to make him throw up the water, they had shaken him, but to no purpose. To indicate just how far the poor little fellow had gone in, the man picked up a pebble and threw it into the sea.
"There, only to there; at three yards from the shore!"
The sea lay at rest, breathing peacefully, close to the head of the dead child. But the sun blazed fiercely down upon the sand; and something pitiless, emanating from that sky of flame and from those stolid witnesses, seemed to pass over the pallid corpse.