From "I promessi sposi" - Cap. XXXIV
by Alessandro Manzoni
Google translation
Prose text
He came down from the doorway of one of those doors, and a woman came toward the convoy, whose appearance announced an advanced but unexperienced youth; and there was a veiled and blurred beauty, but not spoiled by a great passion, and by a mortal languor: that beauty that was soft at the same time and majestic, that shines in the Lombard blood. His gait was fatigued, but not drooping; his eyes gave no tears, but they showed signs of having spread so many; in that sorrow there was a certainty of calm and deep, which testified to a soul that was all aware and present to feel it. But it was not the only aspect of her that, among so many miseries, indicated her so particularly to piety, and revived for her that feeling that was now stuck and ceased in the hearts. She wore a child of perhaps nine years in her neck, dead; but all very well arranged, with her hair parted on her forehead, in a very white dress, as if those hands had adorned her for a long-promised party, and given by prize. Nor did she keep her lying, but supported, sitting on one arm, with her chest resting on her chest, as if she had been alive; except that a white hand waxed like a wax was hanging on one side, with a certain inanimate gravity, and the head rested on his mother's hermit, with a stronger abandon than sleep