Page:Poet Lore, volume 4, 1892.djvu/346

 priest. Her eyes met the austere, gloomy look of the shepherd of souls; she shivered. And to this day it seems to her as though she distinctly heard his reproachful voice:— “God be merciful to you, unhappy daughter! May He be merciful to your child also, whose sinful father will not, cannot, escape eternal damnation.”

The words overwhelmed her ; she staggered. Even to-day—after more than two years—the mere recollection pierces her heart.

She seems again to hear what the priest said after the baptism: “Follow my advice, erring daughter! Guard your child as your eye, and beware lest you should, in its presence, utter any word to remind it of the condemned father. Never speak a word to your child of the life, the death, or the grave of that wicked man, and take care lest the unhappy child should approach the unhallowed grave in which the bones of its villainous father are mouldering. Its vapors shall ever be a pestilential breath for your child; every flower, every blade of grass, every leaf that sprouts from that grave, every grain of dust the wind blows off that grave, shall be pernicious to your child.”

For two years did the unfortunate mother heed the warning of the priest, never speaking a single word to her child about its father; for two years she had guarded it as her eye and taken care that the child should not approach the unholy grave. And to-day, on the anniversary day of the death of the wretched father,—to-day that happened which never should have happened: the child went to the grave, played in the grass, plucked a fading blossom of lilac, and held it in its mouth. And now it is feverish; its breath is hot, the face ghostly pale in the reflection of the moonlight. Is not the prophecy of the “pestilential breath” being fulfilled?

Long stands the poor mother by the cradle, motionless, as if stupefied. The child is breathing at the same quick rate; its breath is as hot as before; and yet it slumbers on as though it felt no pain.