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they stay. We forgot to say that the maiden aunt expressed one doubt, What will the neighbors say, she asked, when they notice the absence of these two people who were at death's door, but couldn't die. The maiden aunt does not usually speak in such a precious, roundabout way, but if she did so now it was in order not to break down in tears, which is what she would have done had she spoken the name of the child who had done no wrong in this world and the words, my brother. The father of the three other children said, We'll simply tell them what happened and await the consequences, we'll probably be accused of making secret burials, outside the cemetery and without the knowledge of the authorities, and, worse still, in another country, Well, let's just hope they don't start a war over it, said the aunt.
    It was almost midnight when they set off for the frontier. The other villagers had taken longer than usual to retire to bed, as if they suspected that something strange was afoot. At last, silence reigned in the streets, and the lights in the houses gradually went out one by one. First, the mule was harnessed to the cart, then, with great difficulty even though he weighed so little, the grandfather was carried downstairs by his son-in-law and his two daughters, who reassured him when he asked faintly if they had the spade and the hoe with them, We do, don't worry, and then the mother went upstairs, took the child in her arms and said, Goodbye, my child, I'll never see you again, although this wasn't true, because she, too, would go in the cart with her sister and her brother-in-law, because they would need at least three people for the task ahead. The maiden aunt chose not to say goodbye to the travelers who would never return and, instead, shut herself up in the bedroom with her nephews. Since the metal rims of the cartwheels would make a terrible noise on the uneven surface of the road, with the grave risk of bringing curious householders to their windows to find out where their neighbors were going at that hour, they made a diversion along dirt tracks that finally brought them out onto the road beyond the village. They weren't very far from the frontier, but the trouble was that the road would not take them there, at a certain point they would have to leave it and continue along paths where the cart would barely fit, and the very last section would have to be made on foot, through the undergrowth, somehow or other carrying the grandfather. Fortunately, the son-in-law has a thorough knowledge of the area because, as well as having tramped these paths as a hunter, he had also made occasional use of them in his role as amateur smuggler. It took them almost two hours to reach the point where they would have to abandon the cart, and it was then that the son-in-law had the idea of putting the grandfather on the mule's back, trusting to the animal's sturdy legs. They unhitched the beast, removed any superfluous bits of harness, and then struggled to lift the old man up. The two women were crying, Oh, my poor father, Oh, my poor father, and their tears took from them what little strength they still had. The poor man was only semi-conscious, as if he were already crossing the first threshold of death. We can't do it, exclaimed the son-in-law in despair, then, suddenly, it occurred to him that the solution would be for him to get on the mule first and then pull the old man up afterward onto the withers of the mule, I'll have to ride with my arms around him, there's no other way, you can help from down there. The child's mother went over to the cart to make sure he was still covered by the blanket, she didn't want the poor little thing to catch cold, and then she went back to help her sister, One, two, three, they said, but nothing happened, the body seemed to weigh like lead now, they could barely lift him off the ground. Then something extraordinary happened, a kind of miracle, a prodigy, a marvel. As if for a moment the law of