In the evening, when the fever returned, she seemed already much more dangerously affected¹.  
On her robust² body, the malady³ had violently taken hold,—the malady recognized too late, and insufficiently⁴ nursed because of her stubbornness as a peasant, because of her incredulous disdain⁵ for physicians and medicine.
 
And little by little, in Ramuntcho, the frightful⁶ thought of losing her installed itself in a dominant⁷ place; during the hours of watchfulness⁸ spent near her bed, silent and alone, he was beginning to face the reality of that separation, the horror of that death and of that burial,—even all the lugubrious⁹ morrows, all the aspects of his future life: the house which he would have to sell before quitting the country; then, perhaps, the desperate attempt at the convent of Amezqueta; then the departure, probably solitary¹⁰ and without desire to return, for unknown America—
 
The idea also of the great secret which she would carry with her forever,—of the secret of his birth,—tormented him more from hour to hour.
 
Then, bending over her, and, trembling, as if he were about to commit an impious thing in a church, he dared to say:
 
“Mother!—Mother, tell me now who my father is!”
 
She

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