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Let us explain at once. On the plains over which the deserted boy was
passing in his turn a beggar woman, nursing her infant and searching for
a refuge, had lost her way a few hours before. Benumbed with cold she
had sunk under the tempest, and could not rise again. The falling snow
had covered her. So long as she was able she had clasped her little girl
to her bosom, and thus died.
The infant had tried to suck the marble breast. Blind trust, inspired by
nature, for it seems that it is possible for a woman to suckle her child
even after her last sigh.
But the lips of the infant had been unable to find the breast, where the
drop of milk, stolen by death, had frozen, whilst under the snow the
child, more accustomed to the cradle than the tomb, had wailed.
The deserted child had heard the cry of the dying child.
He disinterred it.
He took it in his arms.
When she felt herself in his arms she ceased crying. The faces of the
two children touched each other, and the purple lips of the infant
sought the cheek of the boy, as it had been a breast. The little girl
had nearly reached the moment when the congealed blood stops the action
of the heart. Her mother had touched her with the chill of her own
death--a corpse communicates death; its numbness is infectious. Her
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