One woman said, gazing down at the corpse, "Who knows how much pains the mother has taken in raising him!" Another said, "To keep the children from going hungry she has even had to ask charity."
Another told how, only a few months before, the unfortunate child had come very near strangling to death in a courtyard in a pool of water barely six inches deep. All the women repeated, "It was his destiny. He was bound to die that way."
And the suspense of waiting rendered them restless, anxious. "The mother! There comes the mother now!"
Feeling himself grow sick at heart, Giorgio exclaimed, "Can't you take him into the shade, or into a house, so that the mother will not see him here naked on the stones, under a sun like this?"
Stubbornly the man on guard objected:--"He is not to be touched. He is not to be moved--until the inquest is held."
The bystanders gazed in surprise at the stranger,--Candia's stranger. Their number was augmenting. A few occupied the embankment shaded with acacias; others crowned the promontory rising abruptly from the rocks. Here and there, on the monstrous bowlders, a tiny boat lay sparkling like gold at the foot of the detached crag, so lofty that it gave the effect of the ruins of some Cyclopean tower, confronting the immensity of the sea.
All at once, from above on the height, a voice announced, "There she is."
Other voices followed:--"The mother! The mother!"
All turned. Some stepped down from the embankment. Those on the promontory leaned far over. All became silent, in expectation. The man on guard drew the sheet once more over the corpse. In the midst of the silence, the sea barely seemed to draw its breath, the acacias barely rustled. And then through the silence they could hear her cries as she drew near.
The mother came along the strand, beneath the sun, crying aloud. She was clad in widow's mourning. She tottered along the sand, with bowed body, calling out, "O my son! My son!"