In its eyes you would have thought intellect already kindled, though it had not yet found a language.

Already it seemed to recognise its parents; already it stretched forth its arms when Zanoni bent over the bed, in which it breathed and bloomed,--the budding flower! And from that bed he was rarely absent: gazing upon it with his serene, delighted eyes, his soul seemed to feed its own.

At night and in utter darkness he was still there; and Viola often heard him murmuring over it as she lay in a half-sleep.

But the murmur was in a language strange to her; and sometimes when she heard she feared, and vague, undefined superstitions came back to her,--the superstitions of earlier youth.

A mother fears everything, even the gods, for her new-born.