Per la sua creatura

The doorbell rang.

At first, between the darkness of the entryway and that of the staircase, she could not quite tell whether the tall figure who had rung was a man or a woman; then she heard a guttural voice asking, “Signora V***?”—she saw a great black cloak, a black fur, a black hat pulled down over the eyes, a pair of spectacles: it seemed to her that the person was a man dressed as a woman, and she was afraid.

But at once she smiled to herself.

A thief?

In her house there was little to steal: there was not even that pearl called a maid.

“Do sit down.”

Against the brown satin lining of the cloak she appeared most elegant, though no longer young, in a flawless English-cut dress.

She had small hands, tight in gray leather gloves, jewels sparkling at her ears, and on her hat a long tail feather from some rare bird.

And her small, tight, disdainful mouth completed the picture of a great lady accustomed to command.

The stranger studied the humble surroundings, the frail little figure, the very pale face, the red hands of the little lady, and seemed perversely pleased by what she saw.

“I spend the whole winter at Albano.”

“Your little girl's wet-nurse is my gardener's daughter…”

She would have liked to kiss the hem of the stranger's cloak, simply because the stranger's gardener was the wet-nurse's father.

“We are not rich: to pay the wet-nurse we had to send away our maid.”

“He was a post-and-telegraph clerk; a hundred and thirteen lire and ninety-three centesimi a month.”

What else did she want to know?

Even what they were going to eat that day?…

By now Signora V*** was beginning to grow annoyed at the stranger's indiscreet curiosity.

At last the lady made up her mind to give her name, an outlandish name that Signora V*** tried to repeat to herself, without success.

Were those questions even worth asking?

“Ah, it cannot be put into words, dear lady!”

“It cannot be said!”

“It cannot be!…”

“It is a love, that for one's children, which surpasses everything, every word.”

But she said:

“And besides, your little girl is so sweet: I see her every day: the wet-nurse takes her walking in my garden.”

“And the little one knows me: when she sees me she gives little cries: I put my finger in the dimple of her rosy chin and she smiles.”

“She looks like a little bird.”

“He is mad about her.”

“Perhaps, before she came, he didn't want her: life is already hard enough when there are two of you; but afterward!”

“But afterward!”

“No happiness compares to that of having a child, of whom one can say: mine, his, ours!”

“Ah, my dear lady!”

“She is so small!”

“And yet I have an extravagant idea.”

“I don't know why I have this idea.”

“In any case we shall have her taught some art or trade: nowadays a woman who knows how to do nothing is worth nothing.”

The lady seemed to be reflecting on the young mother's axiom.

She was thinking about her daughter's destiny.

Here it was: she wanted to adopt the V***s' little girl; in this way the child would become rich, happy.

And the parents, since they loved her so much, ought to give her up without a murmur.

Her little bird!

Her life!

Her universe!

Her little one!

But that stranger was mad, stark raving mad.

Signora V*** studied her closely; but then she remembered that the stranger had no children, and understood how certain proposals could be made.

Then she saw the stranger to the stairs, wishing to herself that, in going down, she would get tangled in her great cloak and go tumbling all the way to the bottom.

Then she went back in, but no longer remembered the stove, the pot, the hat; she only put her apron back on automatically, and went into the bedroom, knelt before the great white bed, and began to weep.

Evening fell: a melancholy moonbeam slanted in through the window, and the bed, on whose whiteness the curtains' arabesque shadow was traced, was covered all over with a faint golden glow.

The young mother pictured herself again on that bed, with her little girl beside her; and the baby was smiling to herself, her first smile, as the angels must smile.

No other manifestation of human beauty, no spring dawn, nor the sun rising from the sea, nor the moon setting over the mountains, was as beautiful as that newborn creature's smile, as that dawn of life.

he cried, frightened.

“Why are you sitting there in the dark?”