Page:De Amicis - Heart, translation Hapgood, 1922.djvu/319

Rh to Genoa; that she must allow the operation to be performed; that it must be done for the sake of her family. But this suggestion of her children only aggravated her profound discouragement, which had for a long time prostrated her, with increasing anguish. At these words she burst into tears.

“O my sons! my sons!” she exclaimed, wringing her hands; “perhaps they are no longer alive! It is better that I should die also. I thank you, my good master and mistress; I thank you from my heart. But it is better that I should die. At all events, I am certain that I should not be cured by this operation. I thank you for all your care, my good master and mistress. It is useless for the doctor to come again after to-morrow. I wish to die. It is my fate to die here. I have decided.”

Then they began again to console her, and to repeat, “Don't say that,” and to take her hand and beseech her.

But she closed her eyes in exhaustion, and fell into a doze, so that she appeared to be dead. And her master and mistress remained there a little while, by the faint light of a taper, watching with great compassion that admirable mother, who for the sake of saving her family, had come to die six thousand miles from her country, to die after having toiled so hard, poor woman! and she was so honest, so good, so unfortunate.

Early on the morning of the following day, Marco, bent and limping, with his bag on his back, entered the city of Tucuman, one of the youngest and most flourishing towns of the Argentine Republic. It