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In her heart she rebelled against it, as she had never yet rebelled against an act of Alessandro's; but she could not distress him. Was not his burden heavy enough now? Without a word of farewell to any one, they set off in the gray dawn, before a creature was stirring in the village, the wagon piled high; Ramona, her baby in her arms, in front; Alessandro walking. The load was heavy.
Only the murderer himself knew that the dialogue which he had reported to the judge and jury, to justify his act, was an entire fabrication of his own, and that, instead of it, had been spoken but four words by Alessandro, and those were, "Senor, I will explain;" and that even after the first shot had pierced his lungs, and the blood was choking in his throat, he had still run a step or two farther, with his hand uplifted deprecatingly, and made one more effort to speak before he fell to the ground dead.
"How she loves Alessandro!" thought the widowed Carmena. "Will they leave him alive to stay with her? It is better not to love!" But there was no bitter envy in her mind for the two who were thus blest while she went desolate. All of Pablo's people had great affection for Alessandro. They had looked forward to his being over them in his father's place.
The linnets were all nesting, and the finches and the canaries too; and the Senora spent hours, every day, tirelessly feeding the mothers. The vines had all grown and spread out to their thickest; no need any longer of the gay blanket Alessandro had pinned up that first morning to keep the sun off Felipe's head. What was the odds between a to-day and a to-morrow in such a spot as this?
This had taken only a few moments. It was better luck than Alessandro had hoped for; emboldened by it, he began to wonder if he could not get the saddle too.
But, in order to make it intelligible, and to paint the manners of the times more fully, I must first relate the series of events which led to Lorenzino's murder of his cousin Alessandro, and from that to his own subsequent assassination. Lorenzino de' Medici, the Florentine Brutus of the sixteenth century, is the hero of the tragedy.
They followed her by the Via Zitelle, over the Ponte della Morte, further yet, between garden walls topped with lilac, into the Prato della Valle. There the three unconscious girls mingled with the concourse of those who took the air under the still trees. Ippolita, that slim, tall marvel, seemed not to be remarked by any; Alessandro, swooning on his friend's arms, could scarcely believe it.
She lay restlessly tossing from side to side, talking incessantly, clasping her rosary in her hands, and constantly mingling snatches of prayers with cries for Alessandro and Felipe; the only token of consciousness she gave was to clutch the rosary wildly, and sometimes hide it in her bosom, if they attempted to take it from her.
One boasts of the lantern, all of brass, "Wrought by Messer Alessandro Leopardi 'come no c'è altro! there is no other like it which he, the favored gondolier, has been burnishing for the banquet of the Dandolo, to which he shall that night convey the noble lady of the Giustiniani!"
Still thicker and faster fell the snow; the air was dense; it was, as Alessandro had said, worse than the darkness of night, this strange opaque whiteness, thick, choking, freezing one's breath. Presently the rough jolting of the wagon showed that they were off the road. The horses stopped; refused to go on. "We are lost, if we stay here!" cried Alessandro.
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