Page:De Amicis - Heart, translation Hapgood, 1922.djvu/318

284 dwelt the entire Mequinez family. The latter had become very fond of her, and had helped her a great deal. The poor woman had already been ailing when the engineer Mequinez had been obliged unexpectedly to set out from Buenos Ayres, and she had not benefited at all by the fine air of Cordova. But then, the fact that she had received no response to her letters from her husband, nor from her cousin, the presentiment, always lively, of some great misfortune, the continual anxiety in which she had lived, between the parting and staying, expecting every day some bad news, had caused her to grow worse rapidly.

Finally, a very serious malady had declared itself, a strangulated internal rupture. She had not risen from her bed for a fortnight. A surgical operation was necessary to save her life. And at precisely the moment when Marco was apostrophizing her, the master and mistress of the house were standing beside her bed, arguing with her, with great gentleness, to persuade her to allow herself to be operated on, and she was persisting in her refusal, and weeping. A good physician of Tucuman had come in vain a week before.

“No, my dear master,” she said; “do not count upon it; I have not the strength to resist; I should die under the surgeon's knife. It is better to allow me to die thus. I no longer cling to life. All is at an end for me. It is better to die before learning what has happened to my family.” And her master and mistress opposed her, and said that she must take courage, that she would receive a reply to the last letters, which had been sent directly