Page:De Amicis - Heart, translation Hapgood, 1922.djvu/320

286 seemed to him that he again beheld Cordova, Rosario, Buenos Ayres: there were the same straight and extremely long streets, the same low white houses, but on every hand there was a new and magnificent vegetation, a perfumed air, a marvelous light, a sky limpid and profound, such as he had never seen even in Italy. As he advanced through the streets, he experienced once more the feverish agitation which had seized on him at Buenos Ayres; he stared at the windows and doors of all the houses; he stared at all the women who passed him, with an anxious hope that he might meet his mother; he would have liked to question every one, but he did not dare to stop any one. All the people who were standing at their doors turned to gaze after the poor, tattered, dusty lad, who showed that he had come from afar. And he was seeking, among all these people, a countenance which should inspire him with confidence, in order to direct to its owner that tremendous query, when his eyes fell upon the sign of an inn upon which was inscribed an Italian name. Inside were a man with spectacles, and two women. He approached the door slowly, and summoning up a resolute spirit, he inquired:—

“Can you tell me, signor, where the family Mequinez lives?”

“The engineer Mequinez?” asked the innkeeper in his turn.

“The engineer Mequinez,” replied the lad in a faint voice.

“The Mequinez family is not in Tucuman,” replied the innkeeper.

A cry of desperate pain, like that of one who