Page:De Amicis - Heart, translation Hapgood, 1922.djvu/312

280 Worn out with toil and lack of sleep, reduced to rags and dirt, reproached and ill treated from morning till night, the poor boy grew every day more dejected, and would have lost heart entirely if the capataz had not addressed a kind word to him now and then. He often wept, unseen, in a corner of the wagon, with his face against his bag, which no longer contained anything but rags. Every morning he rose weaker and more discouraged, and as he looked out over the country, and beheld always the same boundless and implacable plain, like a terrestrial ocean, he said to himself: “Ah, I shall not hold out until to-night! I shall not hold out until to-night! To-day I shall die on the road!”

And his toil increased, his ill treatment was redoubled. One morning, in the absence of the capataz, one of the men struck him, because he had delayed in fetching the water. And then they all began to take turns at it, when they gave him an order, dealing him a kick, saying: “Take that, you vagabond! Carry that to your mother!”

His heart was breaking. He fell ill; for three days he remained in the wagon, with a coverlet over him, fighting a fever, and seeing no one except the capataz, who came to give him his drink and feel his pulse. And then he believed that he was lost, and invoked his mother in despair, calling her a hundred times by name: “O my mother! my mother! Help me! Come to me, for I am dying! Oh, my poor mother, I shall never see you again! My poor mother, who will find me dead beside the way!”

And he folded his hands over his bosom and prayed.