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Updated: June 19, 2025
It was the leper Berias, whose hopeless tale of awful days was almost done. Zia himself had sometimes limped up the hillside and laid some of his own poor food upon a stone near his cave so that he might find it. One day he had also taken a branch of almond-blossom in full flower, and had laid it by the food.
A change passed over the strained, worn face of the young Queen, like a faint breath of comfort. "Zia mia," she murmured, laying her thin white hand in the warm, restful clasp: and so passed into the first quiet sleep that she had known for days.
The Zia who had been starved and beaten and driven out naked into the world, who had clutched his thin breast and sobbed, writhing upon the earth, where was he? He looked down upon his hands and saw the cracked and scaling palms, and it was as though they were not. He thrust back the covering from his chest and saw the spots there.
"They have the look," he muttered, "of eyes that might behold the Messiah. Who knows? Who knows?" And he turned his camel's head, still shuddering a little, and he rode away back toward the place from which he had come. There was gold in the purse he had given, and when Zia carried it back to Judith, she snatched it from him and asked him many questions.
Even while he related these things he remembered his lesson, and, dropping his eyelids, fixed his gaze on the camel's feet. "Why dost thou cast thine eyes downward?" the man asked in a troubled and intense voice. Zia could not speak, being stricken with fear and the dumbness of bewilderment.
"Why art thou so white?" she said, and caught him by the arm, whirling him toward the light. "Art thou ailing?" "No! no!" cried Zia. She held him still for a few seconds, still staring. "Thou art too white," she said. "I will have no such whiteness. It is the whiteness of of an accursed thing. Get thee gone!" He went away, feeling cold and shaken. He knew he was white.
The younger girl met her cousin at the door; Maria had fainted, and la zia was hysterical; as to Orazio, he was sitting on the sofa crying, with his mean, mouse-coloured head buried in the cushions. "I looked out of your bedroom window as I could not get into her room," whispered Carmela. "Oh, Olive, what shall we do?" "I am going to take down a sheet as they will not let us bring her in.
Then they returned to their places, and slept as before. When she was gone, Zia found that he also was kneeling. He did not know when his knees had bent. He was faint with ecstasy. "She goes to Bethlehem," he heard himself say as he had heard himself speak before. "I, too; I, too." He stood a moment listening to the sound of the ass's retreating feet as it grew fainter in the distance.
The young cat turned to look at her, then, with his slow and stately walk he advanced to her side. 'Vieni vieni qua, Hermione was saying, in her strange caressive, protective voice, as if she were always the elder, the mother superior. 'Vieni dire Buon' Giorno alla zia. Mi ricorde, mi ricorde bene non he vero, piccolo? E vero che mi ricordi?
Of the distance he climbed his thought took no cognizance. There was in this vision neither distance nor time. There was only faint radiance, far, strange sounds, and the breathing of air which made him feel an ecstasy of lightness as he moved. The other Zia had traveled painfully, had stumbled and struck his feet against wayside stones. He seemed ten thousand miles, ten thousand years away.
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