صفحة 1049 من 1118

Renzo, overcome with emotion, drew on one side, and placed

himself near a cabin, where, half concealed, he awaited, with his

eyes open, his heart palpitating, but with renewed confidence,

the result of the emotion excited by the touching scene of which

he had been a witness.

Father Felix proceeded barefooted at the head of the procession,

with the cord about his neck, bearing that long and heavy cross;

he advanced slowly but resolutely, as one who would spare the

weakness of others, but whose ideas of duty enabled him to rise

above his own. The largest children followed immediately behind

him, for the most part barefooted, and very few entirely clothed;

then came the women, nearly all of them leading a child, and

singing alternately the miserere. The feeble sound of the voices,

the paleness and languor of the countenances, would have excited

commiseration in the heart of a mere spectator. But Renzo was

occupied with his own peculiar anxieties; the slow progress of

the procession enabled him to scan with ease every face as it

passed. He looked and looked again, and always in vain! His eye

wandered from rank to rank, from face to face-they came, they

passed-in vain, in vain-none but unknown features!