Murder on Via Belpoggio

Giorgio, an out-of-work porter who has just robbed and killed an acquaintance, finds the consequences of his misdeed hard to bear. It's not that he is racked by remorse for having killed, no, not Giorgio; rather, he is terrified to the point of paralysis that, upon his inevitable capture, he will appear as a greedy coward to his fellow townspeople and, above all, to himself. Here he is, then, returning from his mother's house (where he gets the news she has been dead for a week, news that frustrates his plan to get her help in ascribing to his crimes a noble motive--that is, to enable a poor old woman to live out her last years in comfort):

He [had] lost the hope he had cherished so dearly over the last few hours he had ended up clinging to it quite as much as to the hope of not being found out.* It wasn’t grief over the death of his mother that was sending him reeling and clouding his vision. He didn’t see in front of him the now ashen face of the deceased or call to mind the voice he would now never hear again or the gesture so often filled with affection for him. That old lady had died at a bad time, and her death made of him, once again, a contemptible, rapacious murderer. 

Italo Svevo's 1890 tale "The Murder on Via Belpoggio," available here, is the latest translation published as an e-book by Fario.

* Sentence revised in response to the observant comment below!