It went very quickly now, with the drying fevers that made her cheeks red, her nostrils¹ pinched, or with the exhaustion² of baths of perspiration³, her pulse hardly beating.  
And Ramuntcho had no other thought than his mother; the image of Gracieuse ceased to visit him during these funereal⁴ days.
 
She was going, Franchita; she was going, mute and as if indifferent, asking for nothing, never complaining—
 
Once, however, as he was watching, she called him suddenly with a poor voice of anguish⁵, to throw her arms around him, to draw him to her, lean her head on his cheek. And, in that minute, Ramuntcho saw pass in her eyes the great Terror—that of the flesh which feels that it is finishing, that of the men and that of the beasts, the horrible and the same for all.—A believer, she was that a little; practising rather, like so many other women around her; timid in the face of dogmas, of observances, of services, but without a clear conception of the world beyond, without a luminous⁶ hope.—Heaven, all the beautiful things promised after life.—Yes, perhaps.—But still, the black hole was there, near and certain, where she would have to turn into dust.—What was sure, what was inexorable, was the fact that never, never more would her destroyed visage lean in a real manner on that of Ramuntcho; then, in the doubt of having a mind which would fly, in the horror and the misery⁷ of annihilation, of becoming powder and nothing, she wanted again kisses from that son, and she clutched at him as clutch the

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