Some books are piled on a rickety cane-seated chair; and a second chair bears a plate of beans and some bread.

The place indicates extreme poverty, but is clean and orderly.
The feverish man complains of the cold, of the dampness, of the dark.

He says he is worse, that they have brought him here to die.

They beseech him to calm himself, to hope.

But his young sister, with the diseased heart, begins to feel relief almost as soon as they have placed her on the bed.