It opened its mouth, a couple of twitches with its eyes staring, and its neck fell over--just the same as a bird, just the same." He wept, repeating constantly the resemblance between his son and those birds who die in winter from the cold.
The bell-ringer looked gloomily at Gabriel.
"You who know everything, is it true that it died of hunger ?" And the Tato with his scandalous impetuosity shouted loudly-- "There is no justice in the world! All this must be altered! Fancy a child dying of hunger in this house, where money runs like water, and where all those creatures are dressed in gold!" When the little corpse was carried to the cemetery, the cloister seemed quite deserted; all its life was concentrated in the shoemaker's house, all the women surrounded the mother.

Despair had rendered that sick and feeble woman furious.

She no longer wept: her child's death had made her ferocious--she wished to bite or to dash her skull against the wall.
"Ay! my s-o-o-o-n! my Antonio!" At night Sagrario and the other women remained in the house to look after her.

In her desperation she wished to make some one responsible for her misfortune, and she fixed on those highest in the cloister.
Don Antolin had not helped her with the smallest alms; his affected niece had scarcely been in to see the little one, nothing interested her but men.
"It is all Silver Stick's fault," wailed the poor mother--"he is a thief.

He grinds our poverty with his usurer's snares.