Beati Paoli

by Luigi Natoli

part four, chapter 9

Italiano

English

After three or four days, Emanuel freed himself from the sharpness of evil and entered into convalescence, He went out of the house, in a closed carriage, dark and dull and with a heart full of all desires for revenge. No one had been able to rip out of his mouth what had happened to him; he had no wounds, no bruises, no trace of violence, except his clothes in disorder. The servant rose up, having not seen him and believed that he had gone away, ran to the palace; but, knowing that the master had not returned, he had returned with other servants and found him unconscious, in front of the stairway of St. Dominic, among some of those wanderers who, awakened, were intent on undressing him of what he had. They arrived in time to prevent those who knew what other devilry and carried Emanuele to the palace, which was put up by that return far from ordinary and imaginable.

They took doctors, they woke up aromatizers, all the remedies were used. Emanuele was found, but was attacked by violent convulsions, which lasted almost all night.

The prince of Geraci, his grandfather, was desolate; the servant, being questioned, apologized to say that he knew nothing; the master had sent him away, and in not seeing him return he was anxious and went to seek him.

"Perhaps," he said, "the thieves must have attacked him."

But the explanation did not persuade the prince, all the more because the silence of Emanuele had something dull, of will; as if a feeling, a desire, forced him to keep the secret. Except that some voice began to snort: Two riddles of cursing. One spread with great malice and many fringes the indecent gazzarra occurred at night under the windows of woman Gabriella and it is understood that, lending itself to the most daring cursing, the story quickly spread through the halls, causing laughter and salacious comments, especially among those who in vain had tried to gain that castle spawned. It was not known who was the adventurous winner of the ban that the beautiful lady had imposed herself, neither of the envious, fierce and disappointed lover, who had ordered that noise.

The other, coming out, and it is easy to understand, from the mouths of the servitude of woman Gabriella, was spreading the adventure touched on the duke of Motta who had been forced to ask forgiveness on his knees to the duchess; and for that metamorphosis that turns the real facts into legend, what had been a promise had become a fact, and it was said that woman Gabriella had secretly married to a knight named Don Blasco Albamonte. The alteration or addition, in this case helped the lady, removing all reason for reproach and replacing you with a high and inexplicable wonder.

The two brooks joined together; the two stories were completed and explained to each other: Emanuele was once the target of reproach and ridicule that filled him with shame and anger. The measure came to the full, when the old prince his grandfather, to whom those news bitterly came, rebuked him and threatened him to close him in a convent, and not to let him out except at the time of marriage.

"No one in our house, no one, has ever committed such a villainy, and your father, Don Emanuele, was a true and perfect knight... Shame! I do not say that such lownesses are not carried out towards a lady, but not even towards a poor girl of the volgo!... And if it's true, and I want to hope that it's true, that Don Blasco brought you up and forced you to ask for forgiveness, he did well, for God's sake! and when he comes back from the war I will visit him and compliment him... Yes, yes, I the Prince of Geraci... That bastard's a lot more gentleman than you and he was right to teach you a lesson. Well deserved, for God's sake! well deserved!"

The rabble poisoned Emanuele's soul, increasing his hatred and vengeance. Ah, you had to take a revenge on the bastard and the lady, and so resounding, to make me forget the confrontation at once. For several days he avoided the frequency of his friends; he went out in a carriage or on horseback, but went out the doors, taking some of the road that led to the villages or farmhouses already springs in the surroundings of the city. In the house he occupied long hours with his master of fencing, famous in Palermo for some of his special shots.

Towards the end of August, one evening, walking outside Porta Nuova in a porterina, just past the Ginestra palace, he saw himself greeted respectfully by a man who did not seem completely unknown to him.

It was Matteo Lo Vecchio.

He hardly responded to the greeting and pulled ahead, but the birro, without dismaying, approached him at the door saying:

"Your most illustrious lordship forgive me, if I dare approach... but it is to serve your lordship. At the palace they won't let me in... yet, if I could offer you my bondage, your most illustrious lordship wouldn't have happened... what happened... Maybe your lordship doesn't remember me anymore..."

Emanuele had frowned, and was about to drive him away, but the last words opened his memory and, looking at the birro with the frown of the annoyer, he said:

"What do you want?..."

"Yes remembers, your most illustrious lordship, that I, for the obligation I feel towards his noble house, and for the servitude that I had towards the illustrious Mr. Don Raimondo, good memory, I hastened to reveal to her that a such, soldier in dragons..."

"Yes, yes! I remember well. What do you want now?"

"I have many things to say... I could inform your lordship about him and... her... And then... Does your most illustrious lordship know that I am Corporal of the Algozins? Have you never heard of Matteo Lo Vecchio?..."

"Ah!... Is it you?. But you are excommunicated!..."

"Very illustrious, no; I was acquitted by the vicar general. You can inquire. This morning, for example, I confessed... He sees that there is no danger of receiving me..."

Emanuele, whose cheeks were impervious, after a moment of silence asked him:

"So you say?..."

"That I am entirely at the services of your Lordship... But these are not things to be said on the street..."

"All right, come tonight at one hour at night. I'll give orders to let you pass."

"An hour at night I'll be serving you. I kiss her hands."

Matteo Lo Vecchio remade the route and returned to the city. Since he had known free Blasco, he was devoured by the powerless rage of revenge: He could have pulled a carrubinite at night, but he didn't want to risk it, in the doubt of failing the shot and exposing himself to a certain danger, because a kind of superstition made him believe Blasco invulnerable. He followed him, followed him, spied on him, to study his habits, his time, the possibilities of striking him with security and impunity.

He had thus seen the scene of Blasco and Emanuele's friends; he had followed him to Coriolano's house, followed him to the Butera palace. Then he had known what had happened between him and Emanuele because of a woman Gabriella and was pleased with it, having intuited in this the ubi consistam, the point of support of the lever to dispose of the hated enemy.

"Emanuele was in love, so he thought. - What could make a man beast more than love?" We had to work on this ground. Now Blasco had left for the war and Gabriella was alone: He had to take advantage of it. He formed his own diabolical plan to give Emanuele a victory that had to dig the abyss into which Blasco would disappear forever. However, Gabriella had to be lured into an ambush.

In those days there were frequent news of the siege of the Castello di Termini, which proceeded without any certain outcome due to the valiant resistance of the Savoy garrison, which was greatly benefited by the impregnability of the fortress.

The garrison, between the concussion of the city, had withdrawn and ensnared in the castle, forcing the citizens to provide him with what was necessary; and welcomed by cannons the first companies of dragons, who had tried to occupy the city, had forced them to turn off and camp at a mile and a half from the walls, in a place then called Impalistrato. But after the other militias arrived and the artillery and mortars landed, the camp was placed at the Capuchin monastery and the batteries began to be placed: The mortars at the slaughterhouse, the cannons at the Happy Door. From the castle the Savoiards with fixed blows prevented the construction, and it was urgently necessary to build a covered road, to protect the batteries. Blasco was destined to harass the Savoiards, to give time for the road to be built.

As these, defended from the site itself, could, without their danger, annoy the Spaniards who were at the bottom, Blasco imagined to turn his attention, attacking them and threatening them from another point. Surrounded the southern hills, and penetrated the upper part of the city, along the walls between Porta Girgenti and Porta Palermo, he drove himself among the houses and succeeded in the piazza del Duomo, where, scattered his men, began with a thick fire of rifle to spread the disorder in the troops stationed on the stands.

That sudden attack terrified the citizens already dismayed by the frequent explosion of grenades and bombs: There was a fugitive general, who gave Blasco a way to explain a bolder action.

He pushed ahead, on horseback, alone, in the open with the rifle in his hand, walking the line with a superb act of challenge, which filled the Savoiards themselves with amazement.

A lively swing of blows caught him on every side; it seemed that he laughed at it. Taking off his hat, he waved at the whistling of the balls, shouting:

"Lords savoiardi, get out of the cage, for God's sake."

His companions called him:

"Get out of the fire!... Come indoors!..."

Then two, three, five dragons, ashamed of leaving him alone, pushed the horses next to him and all set out to gallop under the curtain of fire, shooting, shouting, in a heroic, useless madness. Two fell. Blasco was caught by two balls; one touched his head over his ear, carrying away a lock of hair, the other broke the buckle of the baltheum on which the giberna was attached and wounded him over the sternum, not seriously.

"It's nothing!" cried he; "Savoie lords, your balls are ricotta!..."

But the other dragons They took the horse's reins and forced him to take cover.

On August 29, the batteries began to operate; it was a very dense duel of bombs and grenades on both sides, all the more admirable as the Savoiards were no more than three hundred, and the besieging forces were more than ten times greater.

Blasco, who, although wounded, had not wanted to abandon the operations of siege, urged and carried out the most risky feats; among the smoking rubble of the castle and the trenches he had set himself to conquer his captain's scarf or death. He was waiting for the breach to open to go first to the assault and followed feverishly the ruin of the curtain of the castle, under the terrible blows of the Spanish mortars.

This news came to Palermo. Matteo Lo Vecchio, who had been spying on Gabriella's house for a few days, noticed a car that came every two days and had realized that he had to be some messenger of Blasco. He paid attention to you. He kept his mail; on the day when the car was due to return, he waited for him at the corner of the Materassai road, and when he saw him, he stopped him:

"Excuse me... you're from Termini, aren't you?"

"From Termini, sir yes."

"Send you Don Blasco Albamonte, Dragon of Numanzia..."

"Exactly... how do you know your lordship?..."

"Beautiful! If I'm waiting on purpose!... You come and bring a letter to my mistress, Mrs. Duchess..."

"Ah!"

"I am the master of the house... Mrs. Duchess, what can be said I saw her birth, because I was at the service of her father, she called me an hour ago, and she said: - "Cosimo, do me favor (say, a favor, for his goodness!) I must go to my brother, the Marquis, and I cannot wait; today should come letter from Don Blasco; you wait for the car and have the letter given; I will send him the answer today." And here I am. I've seen you come three times already..."

The car did not suspect anything; Matteo Lo Vecchio had such an honest face and then knew everything so well, that it was impossible not to believe him.

He did not hesitate to deliver the letter to him. Matteo Lo Vecchio wrapped it in a handkerchief and put it in his pocket.

"Come and drink," he said, leading him to St. James the Navy, where there were taverns.

An hour later, the half-brilli car reassembled on the mule, and went to the bottom, where Matteo Lo Vecchio had promised to bring him the answer.

The birro, barely alone, pulled the letter out of his pocket, and was about to break its seal, but then, made a better reflection, put it in his pocket, and hastened towards the Palazzo Geraci.

Emanuele let him in right away.

"What is it?"

"I already have my plan!... Would your most illustrious lordship be pleased to own some of the letters Don Blasco sends to Mrs. Duchess?..."

"A letter?" he said.

"How... where do you have it?..."

"I had it for goodness of the car that acts as a mezzanine. At this moment, your lordship has before it the humble butler of the Duchess, confidant of her secrets..."

Emanuele shook the letter that the birro gave him, but at the sight of the seal intact his hands stopped with a gesture of scrupulousness.

"What the hell! This letter is necessary to know it... It serves my plan..."

"What plan?..." Matteo Lo Vecchio seemed to get annoyed:

"I mean," he said, "Do you want the Duchess in your power? If you want, let me do it, and tomorrow the Duchess will be in her arms..."

A lively flame came up again on his face and his nostrils shook with a feline expression.

"Give to me; I have no scruples, and so it will not be said that the seals have broken your lordship."

He took the letter, opened it, and handed it to Emanuel, saying:

"Vessignoria read."

As soon as he had looked, the young man abbreviated and became fierce; the letter began with the vocations in use at that time: "Dear sigh of my heart," and the signature said precisely, "your slave who sighs for you Blasco."

He quickly saw her with a deaf anger, as if she had been a husband or a betrayed lover, with a lust of envy and greed of hungry, and when he had read it, he asked with an altered voice:

"Well, what are you going to do now?"

"Don't you guess? Mr. Blasco was slightly injured; he doesn't say so in the letter, but I learned it from the car; or well, what if we assume he was seriously injured?..."

"And then?"

"And then?... the wound is serious, he's just... It is understood that it will show the desire to have alongside the Duchess, who frightened by the news will not think twice to make trunks, and leave with her litter for Termini... The roads are not safe, especially at the Portella above S. Nicola... and..."

The eyes of Emanuel shone; more than the words, the retiches and the mimics of the eyes and the lips of the birro revealed to him all the imaginary design.

"Bacchus!" he exclaimed with joy; "you are a fool of ingenuity!... So let's make this letter... But who will bring her?"

"I'm in charge... Do you know Don Blasco's writing?"

"No..."

"So write your lordship; imagine that you are a comrade of arms or the squadron chaplain... Write the same sentences... If you allow me, I will give you the letter..."

Emanuele was infatuated with that rascal, in which he saw only his vengeance and his revenge; he took a sheet of paper and, under the dictation of the birro that was keeping an eye on Blasco's letter, wrote:

"Dear sighing of my heart,

Do not be frightened, my joy, if this letter is written by another hand; a laughing man of war has happened to me a wound that prevents me from using my hand.

Do not be frightened, my heart, it is not a very serious thing; although you force me to stay in bed... Your last letter, so full of tenderness, enchanted me, and did not make me feel the suffering of the wound. I imagine the effect your white hands would have on me if they were lovingly placed on it!... As for what you write to me, do not doubt me: I long for the end of this campaign to spend my life on your knees, all for you. Thank you for the handkerchiefs and scarf, which I tied to my hips like a talisman.

"I kiss your hands with all my love, and I am

your slave who sighs for you.

From Termini, on August 1, 1718.

Blasco."

"Very well!" exclaimed the birro approving himself. "Now we have to close and seal. Let's look at the seal. Take a good look at your eyesight better than I do."

Emanuele looked, and said,

"It is not a coat of arms: I think it's the footprint of a gun kick... or of a hooker..."

Matthew also looked carefully; then he pulled a short gun out of a brache pocket, and compared the metal button that adorned the kick with the print on the wax.

"It also seems to me that it is a button; it is not equal to this, but it resembles, and can pass. Let us close the letter and seal it."

When all was done, the birro kept the letter and said to Emanuel:

"Your Ladyship gets half a dozen determined men for tomorrow... I'll be back tonight... with the answer of Mrs. Duchess."

He went away leaving Emmanuel stunned by what he had seen, heard and done, and above all by that man so clever, so ingenious, so naughty, fruitful of expedients and active, whose interest did not yet know what to attribute.

Half an hour later, Gabriella received the letter, which filled her with fear. He wanted to see the villain who brought it, and he was amazed not to recognize the usual car. What did this novelty mean? The villain immediately explained to her that Cosimo had felt ill, perhaps a stroke of sunshine, and had to disassemble at the bottom and lie down; he had called him, who was of the same country, and had begged him to bring the letter and withdraw the answer, which he, Cosimo, would then bring to the lord.

The answer was so obvious that it could not arouse any suspicion: Gabriella sat down at her desk, and with her nervous hand, like her troubled heart, she wrote two or three lines, closed the sheet, sealed it, and handed it over to the villan with a fine piece of two Tari, saying to him:

"Bring this letter to Cosimo immediately, tell him to leave immediately; I will give him a nice gift tomorrow, as soon as I know that he has carried out the order quickly."

She let herself be overcome by a great agitation, suspecting that the wound was even much more serious than what Blasco tried to make her believe. He wanted to leave immediately, run to the camp, take with him the wounded dear, save him with his care, with his love, and exalted himself in his imagined mission as a sweet nurse representing with fantasy a series of sweet and moving scenes. That night would have been as long as it would have been! He ordered his traveling litter in the morning at dawn, and had his brother give him two armed servants, on horseback, to accompany her to Bagheria," he said, to mislead his relatives - where he was planning to stay fifteen days in his house.

The dawn was still far from coming, and Gabriella was counting her hours impatiently. He wondered where Cosimo might have arrived at that time, or whether he had arrived; and what effect his short and feverish letter had. What was Blasco doing? Who assisted him? What was the severity of his injuries? Oh God! and the day never passed! how long those summer days were! Throughout the night she went from one vision to another, doing and unraveling plans, and in the moments when the sleep closed her eyes she dreamed of Blasco a little dying, a little 'on horse at the head of a squadron, dressed as a general, a little' hugged to her: And they were whispering, frightening, and spasms.

At last the dawn painted the sky. She heard, down under the windows, a slashing of rattles, a sign that the litter was waiting and the mules were impatient. He dressed quickly, wrapped himself in a black silk mantle, which covered the whole person, and went down. There were the litterers and the two servants on horseback, like her. He wished. Helped, he jumped into the litter, which at one sign moved, with a great tinge of rattles, which multiplied in the quiet square.

The day was beautiful and the first rays of sunshine shone in the clear blue sky. The litter crossed the road of the Materassai, those of the Loggia and the Cintorinai and started for Porta di Termini, between the re-rise of the city, meeting only a few citizens, chariots and "redines" of mules.

The journey continued without incident to Bagheria; here a short stop was made in front of a tavern, where the litterers had a rustic breakfast, while Gabriella woman, whose stop seemed too long, beat her feet in the bottom of the litter and urged them.

He took the road again. Now the road, or rather the path, climbed on the hills, in a deserted countryside, in which there alternated spots of figs of India and of thorns between rocks that seemed precipitated from the top of the mountains. Wild loneliness brought a sense of horror.

Suddenly the litters stopped.

Donna Gabriella looked at the head to ask the cause of that stop, but with her fear she saw at the hips of the narrow path, with the carabines flattened, men with the face covered with a handkerchief.

Evidently she had fallen into an ambush of thieves. She thought she was lost, not already because of the fear of being robbed, but because of what could happen to her worse.

The two accompanying servants, overwhelmed by the number, had to give up the use of weapons in order not to be unnecessarily killed. She was therefore at the mercy of the evil factors, who, without leaving their threatening attitude, had forced the litterers and servants to throw their weapons on the ground and to kneel all in a group.

A man, then, came out of a thick bush with a masked face and approached the litter, opened the door, said with a voice that betrayed the concussion:

"Do not be afraid, madam, that a hair will not be wrong to you, only that you follow us."

Donna Gabriella reached her hands in the act of prayer; her presence of spirit failed to the idea of not being able to continue her journey.

"Take whatever you want, I promise to send you what you ask, but, I beg you, let me go!"

The masked man gave in a loud laugh:

"Ah! ah! ah! do you believe in street thieves? Thanks for the honor! It's not your money we want; it's your company... Shut up and obey; so you cannot resist."

Locked the door, and placed next to you with a gun in his hand, he ordered the litterers to take back the reins of the mules, which stood with their heads down, waiting; and to his men indicating the servants:

"Tie those two and lead them to where you know; at the slightest sign of resistance or flight, slaughter them and fear nothing."

The servants, closely bound by those evildoers, were pushed forward along the path with the footsteps of the carabines, while the litterers, trembling, resumed the reins and, following the orders of the masked man, bent to the left, where the countryside declined towards the sea.

Donna Gabriella begged in vain, and her prayers alternated with threats. He named his relative, who would not tolerate an offense like that, but the masked man laughed. She looked at him carefully between one prayer and the other; that lonely person, that attitude, that management, the very tone of the voice, though altered by art, all this did not seem entirely new to him; it aroused them at the bottom of the memory confused and indeterminate reminiscences.

Of course, despite the country dress, the masked man did not seem vulgar, and he was not to be one of those bandits who walked the countryside. There was finesse in your hands, and the underwear was fine. But these discoveries increased the terror of woman Gabriella: That man was probably some gentleman persecuted by justice who wanted to get a day of love. How to defend it?

He looked lost at the street they were walking through the litter, and he thought of Blasco. A cruel spasm tore her heart to pieces, to the thought that he perhaps agoned far away, in the desire to feel her close to himself, while she strayed more, prey to another, who would use all violence to possess and detach her forever from Blasco.

The view of the sea, of which he felt the rush, caused her to be moved and the blood froze. Did they board it? She remembered when she had been kidnapped by the Beati Paoli; then she had been surrounded with respect, and perhaps never had her body been so inviolable, as among those people. But then she did not hit herself, but Don Raimondo; she and Violante were only hostages, sacred. But now? Now he felt next to himself the brutal impulses of male, who had waited for her at the entrance to assault her and conquer her. It was different. There was something more delicate, more sacred that was threatened, and that she already saw in imminent danger.

Blasco's love had aroused a deep feeling of fidelity: a new modesty, sweet and strong at once; a conjugal chastity that had almost restored her soul and life. Now all this seemed already close to falling, breaking itself, under the violent violation of the boundaries that love had raised between her and the other men.

Behind this violation stood the spectre of the death of every delighted thing, of the reason for living! abandonment, despicable loneliness, endless despair!

How do you defend yourself?

The sea was just a few steps away; a boat waved gently, hidden in a small natural bosom, defended by rocks. You couldn't see any ships. On those rocks stood a small castle, with a beautiful round tower; was it there that they carried it?

It was the castle of St. Nicholas, founded in the sixteenth century by Tomaso Crispo, now owned by a certain Gastone, friend of Emanuele and his companion of bullies and gallant adventures.

So the robber was St. Nicholas' baronet? He too had been one of his worshipers, he too had desired and besieged him, but that was not his build; no.

The litter entered the castle; the two beds were closed in a room on the ground floor, which had a window equipped with iron bars; Gabriella woman torn almost by force from the litter, was carried over.

The castle seemed abandoned: It called for help, but neither did a window open, nor did a face look out into the compartment of a door. The stairs he crossed, lifted with weight by two handfuls, were deserted.

He was laid over a canapÈ, in a room in which, over a predella, he ruled a bed of wrought iron, between curtains of red damask. The masked man remained with her, the servants disappeared at a nod.

"Now," she said, "you are in my power!"

But the imminent danger infused Gabriella with the courage that until then had been lacking, gave her back the spirit she had lost; she quickly measured her strength and her ability to resist that young and vigorous man and sensed that he could not resist for long, and would have to give in. It was necessary to resort to cunning, and to achieve with it those results that would not have been possible to have by his forces. Trembled within himself, he armed himself with all his seductions. Feigning a concussion, in the conditions of spirit in which it was found, was not difficult for her; the same tremor that fear spread in her body and voice added a more graceful charm to the expression of confusion that her face had assumed.

With an outrage that was also true at the bottom, he said:

"Lord, I could understand all the daring, but not that of committing violence, worthy of riders of the highway!... Your conduct is what may be most vile, and a well-born lady can only feel disgust at the contact of your hands."

Emanuele, to this reaction he did not expect, was a little disconcerted, no matter how broken to the gallant feats, he had never found himself in those singular conditions and with a lady as a woman Gabriella; the same emotion that had invaded him in finding himself almost master of the situation had a little 'unarmed. He whispered:

"Ma'am, believe that if I didn't love you with all the passion that a fervent heart is capable of, I wouldn't dare kidnap you... Forgive a heart that beats for you!..."

"Forgive you?" he said, "Do you want me to forgive you? Who are you? I do not know you, I cannot forgive an ignoble or at least unbecoming action, to a person who I ignore if he is worthy, I do not say of my forgiveness, but that I speak the word to her..."

Emanuele had an instant of irresoluteness; he felt a point, and he wanted nothing better than to be recognized.

Donna Gabriella noticed that irresoluteness and pressed:

"A gentleman, even if he pushed his audacity to the point of violence, as you did, would not hesitate for a moment to make himself known... and to assume loyally and openly the responsibility for his actions."

Then Emanuel, with a quick gesture, took off his mask and knelt before the Duchess, surprised by the astonishment and frantic indignation, said:

"Here I am, it's me! Forgive me."

But the indignation of woman Gabriella was not this time simulated.

"You!" he exclaimed; "you!"

Among the various assumptions that had leaped into her brain, only this one, which was so obvious, did not appear to her: that the kidnapper could be Emanuele. He knew it overpowering and violent; she had been besieged by him, annoyed; he had suffered from him a public insult, and yet her figure had not flashed, perhaps because, believing him shameful of what he had done, he did not suppose him capable of imagining that rapture so romantic, and of Go back to her.

But the indignation was greater than the surprise. It was then Emanuel who invaded the camp of his brother; he who more than anyone else should have had the duty to respect him, as an inviolable and sacred thing: He, the author of that vile and ignominious magzarre, under his windows.

"You!" he repeated, not being able to dominate; "you!"

All his purposes of cunning, of fiction were dispersed before that reality that drew them, in a burst of hatred, that abusive, defamatory episode that had caused her to shed so many tears of pain and anger: She forgot her weakness, forgot to be at the mercy of a young man capable of all violence, even vulgar and laity, and exclaimed:

"And dare appear before me!"

Standing with the shining eyes of all the storms of anger and hatred, with his finger stretched, as if he had wanted to lighten the bold, vibrant all over the person of a new energy, deceiving himself almost to be stronger and surer than he was, cried out:

"Get out! Get out! I am ashamed to be in front of a vile soul like yours!... I suck at you! Get out!..."

Emanuele had become pale, then red, as congested by those words that slapped him in the face. His violent and rebellious disposition resurrected, his face transformed under a beastly expression. With swollen veins, burning eyes, tight fists, it seemed like it was about to burst.

"To me?" he roared; "to me? Ah! you are ashamed, you!... You! Forget, then, that you are in my power, and that here I command only?... Ah, Mrs. Duchess, did you believe that an equal of mine, an Albamonte, would tolerate your contempt?... I will have, not out of love, not because I am so crazy for you as you may have believed, but to teach you and your lover how to treat my peers!... it is my revenge, Mrs. Duchess, and I do not give up..."

"Vile!" cried Gabriella on his face; "vile! you want to take revenge on a weak and defenceless woman, surrounded by your own dogs; but if Blasco were here..."

"I would be doubly happy to see you both at my feet... and give me the supreme joy of possessing you before his eyes... is the only revenge that will heal the face at once."

"Vile! vile! vile!..."

Donna Gabriella could not find another word, but her anger, the insults, her attitude of struggle stirred up the passions of Emanuele: The beast trembled in him with all the violence of his appetites. Ghignò:

"Vile!... be it, I don't care. But I will bow your pride..."

She wandered off to take over her, but Gabriella, a lighter woman, wandered under him, and placed a high chair between her and Emanuele, as if to make a shelter, with her eyes full of burning tears, threatened:

"Beware of what you do!... Take care of yourself!... All your violence will cost you bitterly..."

But Emanuel no longer heard anything; his reason was overwhelmed by the impulses of the concupiscent beast. With a jump, Gabriella grabbed Gabriella, holding her wrists in the grip of her fist to prevent her from reacting, and forcing her to fold her torso back.

She struggled desperately, trying to bite her hands, to oppose her knee against that body that pressed on her; hatred, rebuke, multiplied her forces, but man in the struggle had lost all feeling of respect and humanity, and she gradually felt the superiority of those muscles that seemed to become more and more vigorous.

There was a moment when he feared.

He felt his resistance decreased.

In that moment he lived all the sorrows and all the despairs and his heart roared, his eyes filled with burning tears, and his breath seemed like a sob or a sob...

One more minute, and he would've had the shame... just a second.

A shot resonated in the courtyard; at the same time the windows of the window fell broken.

Emanuele stopped, rose up, looked around with furious amazement. Another shot resonated; other glass plummeted.

"Damn it!" cried Emanuele rushing towards the window. Donna Gabriella leaped up with her face illuminated by a great hope and, pressing her chest as if to compress her beats, murmured with an inexpressible accent:

"God! God!"

Almost at the same time, violent blows were beaten at the door: Emanuele, snorting, headed there holding the sword.

"Who is it?"

And they said unto him other furious blows, whereupon the door fell, and opened wide: Three men appeared on the threshold, with guns flattened; their faces were covered with a mask and guns and daggers on the belt. Behind them was one who seemed to be the head, who, not without sarcasm, said:

"It seems Mr. Duke is having a good time, and we're bothering him... I'm sorry, but I'm sure the lady Duchess doesn't find Mr. Duke's amusements to her taste, so we do our duty to beg you friendly to let the lady free..."

Donna Gabriella got her hands in a rush of joy shouting:

"Thank you! Thank you!... Ah! I'm safe!"

"Who are you? What do you want?" screamed Emanuele, bruised with anger, in the powerlessness of reacting under the threat of gun mouths, black and terrible. "How dare you enter my house?..."

"Adagio, my lord; I bet that when Mr. Gastone, who after all has no brigandish habits, knows what use you wanted his castle to serve, he will find some emphasis on the expression "my house." As for daring, Mr. Duke knows that we enter everywhere... It is our duty and at the same time our right..."

And when Gabriella turned to a woman, the masked man added:

"If Mrs. Duchess wants to, her litter awaits at the door."

"You will not come out alive! Neither I nor others!"

He made the act of passing through her with the sword, but then, agile as a leopard, the masked man leaped at him, grabbed his arm, disarmed him, even before he had time to prepare for a resistance, and said:

"You're an evil and evil bad boy!"

Emanuele fought to release himself from the grip of that rigid and tenacious arm as steel.

The man dragged him among the three armed.

"Persuade yourselves," he smiled under the mask, "my lord duke, that the women of others should be respected."

In a moment, Emanuele, while fighting like a beast gripped by the snare, saw himself bound in a frame of ropes as in a net, powerless to move his arms and legs, lifted up high, carried down into the court, where he saw, amazed and burst out of anger, his men tied by their hands and feet to the rings of flint to which the horses were bound; and before them other men disguised and armed.

He had a violent outburst of rage against his men; being unable to vent otherwise the furious anger that roared within him spit upon them, crying out:

"Vigliacchi!"

But the men who carried him did not give him the ease to say anything else, stuck a head of the ropes in one of the big rings that once served to stop the chains of the drawbridge, pulled him up, leaving him suspended by the arms along the doorpost, laughing and smiling at him on his face.

Emanuele was screaming, groaning, blaspheming, with his mouth full of foam, bruised, agitated by Ferine impulses. His face had nothing human anymore.

He saw the litter of Gabriella woman coming out of the castle, to whose door went the head of those masked men, who, passing before Emanuele, raised his head, looked at him with a singing smile and greeted him mockingly with the hat, said to him:

"So many greetings, and have a good stay, Don Emanuele!"

Emanuele saw the litter drifting away and disappearing among the rocks that flanked the path, followed by armed men. In the silent castle were puffed with anger and yellow for fear his men tied to the rings: And he dangles down the door, like a hanged man.

The prince of Geraci saw him return in the evening over a kind of stretcher, carried by villains. He had dislocated arms.

At the same time a servant brought him a mysterious letter. He opened it and read:

"Most illustrious Prince,

Only for a matter of your person do we limit ourselves to a little warning to your lord nephew. Persuade him that the time of violence and bullying is over."

No signature, but a small seal, whose imprint bore a cross, crossed diagonally by two crude swords.

And the prince read, and looked with amazement, and murmured with an air of dismay:

"The Beati Paoli!"