"I won't have it," she said with that obstinacy that made her so
terrible.
"I won't have a strange woman's milk for my daughter. I will nurse her,
her mother."
And they had to give the baby to her.
When Josephina seemed recovered, her mother, feeling that her mission
was over, went home to Madrid. She was bored to death in that silent
city of Venice, night after night she thought she was dead, for she
could not hear a single sound from her bed. The calm, interrupted now
and then by the shouts of the gondoliers filled her with the same terror
that she felt in a cemetery. She had no friends, she did not "shine";
there was nobody in that dirty hole and nobody knew her. She was always
recalling her distinguished friends in Madrid where she thought she was
an indispensable personage. The modesty of her granddaughter's
christening left a deep impression in her mind in spite of the fact that
they gave her name to the child; an insignificant little party that
needed only two gondolas; she, who was the godmother, with the
godfather, an old Venetian painter, who was a friend of Renovales and,
besides, Renovales himself and two artists, a Frenchman and another
Spaniard. The Patriarch of Venice did not officiate at the baptism, not
even a bishop. And she knew so many of them at home. A mere priest, who
was in a shameful hurry, had been sufficient to christen the
granddaughter of the famous diplomat, in a little church, as the sun was
setting.
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