A few feet only from the Duomo the campanile drew her vision skyward;
the film of smoke was lighter here, and the sky seemed nearer--bluer.
She turned to her little charge with a beaming face--her moods were so
easily wrought upon by phases of nature, but slowly moved by personal
influences. "See'st thou, bimbo, how it is beautiful here by the Duomo?"

But the little fellow, in one of his sudden spasms of pain, was
striking the air impotently with small, clenched fists, frightening the
children who were gathering around him, joining in his cries.

Her caress and passionate forgiveness were always ready for the paroxysm
in which she was violently pushed away and combated with struggling feet
and hands, before came the period of exhaustion in which he nestled
close, panting from weakness. Then she carried him into the church,
where, kneeling before the Mother of Sorrows, whose outstretched hands
seemed to touch her own in responsive sympathy and gift of calm, she
prayed and wept.

"O Holy Mater Dolorosa! Why need the children suffer?--they are so
tender and so dear!"

She knelt with loving, protecting arms folded close about the little
form now breathing softly and at rest, while an agony of questioning
filled her prayer to that beseeching Mater Dolorosa, who, wrapped in the
clinging folds of her long blue robe, still leaned forward from the
marble background of the apse, compassionate for the suffering ones of
earth, with imploring hands and ceaseless dropping tears, symbol of love
abounding--a symbol, too, of the dignity of those who suffer and are
pure in heart.