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Updated: June 14, 2025
A murmur of enthusiastic applause greeted the good king as he passed through the little throng of persons who had witnessed what had taken place. Acknowledging it with a quiet unaffected bow, he left the house, and signed to the beccamorti, who still waited outside, that they were now free to perform their melancholy office.
There was some noisy argument going on; two or three beccamorti were loudly discussing together and swearing profusely some women were crying bitterly, and in the center of the excited group a coffin stood on end as though waiting for an occupant.
There was something truly revolting in the way they doubled up the arms and legs and squeezed in the shoulders of the deceased man one could hear the bones crack. I watched the brutal proceedings for a minute or so, and then I said aloud: "You had better make sure he is quite dead," The beccamorti looked at me in surprise; one laughed grimly and swore.
One of the gentlemen in attendance on the king preceded him and announced his approach, whereupon the loud clamor of tongues ceased, the men bared their heads, and the women checked their sobs. "What is wrong here, my friends?" the monarch asked with exceeding gentleness. There was silence for a moment; the beccamorti looked sullen and ashamed.
Then one of the women, with a fat good-natured face and eyes rimmed redly round with weeping, elbowed her way through the little throng to the front and spoke. "May the Holy Virgin and saints bless your majesty!" she cried, in shrill accents. "And as for what is wrong, it would soon be right if those shameless pigs," pointing to the beccamorti, "would let us alone.
It was useless to expostulate with this feminine scarecrow; her son was, happily for himself, unconscious, and after some more wrangling he was laid down on her doorstep, where he shortly afterward expired, his body being afterward carted away like so much rubbish by the beccamorti. The heat in the city was intense.
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