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Updated: June 6, 2025
As he touched her cold hand, he felt his heart thrilled with awe; the legend of "The Dead Bride" shot suddenly through his mind. But Olimpia had drawn him closer to her, and the kiss appeared to warm her lips into vitality.
"Tell me," said Olimpia here, "who is that pretty gentleman with my friend? Is he not a minstrel?" The Captain turned in his saddle and, when he had observed, snorted his disdain. "That sprout, my deary?" said he. "Some such dapper little chamber-fellow, I'll warrant you. A lap-dog, a lady's toy, with a piping voice and an eye for mischief.
His ringing tones caught the ears of Captain Mosca, and set that great man scowling. "If I don't get a crumb down that yapping gullet, call me not Mosca," he grumbled. "Speak a little louder, Signor Capitano," said his pillion. "Your pardon, Madonna Olimpia," he answered, "but I believe I was breathing a prayer on account of the little love-boy yonder." Olimpia laughed.
Professor Spalanzani strode slowly through the empty apartment, his footsteps giving a hollow echo; and his figure had, as the flickering shadows played about him, a ghostly, awful appearance. "Do you love me? Do you love me, Olimpia? Only one little word Do you love me?" whispered Nathanael, but she only sighed, "Ach! Ach!" as she rose to her feet.
"If you do not drop that lady's hand, my lad " growled the Mosca. "What then, sir?" "Then," the Captain roared, "by the ante-chambers of Paradise, she shall cling to carrion!" Bellaroba with a little cry fell to her knees; Olimpia bit her finger; Angioletto shrugged. "You have better lungs than manners, Captain," he said quietly. "These ladies of ours are fatigued with travel and tired of fasting.
Olimpia declared that she was a starving widow and could do nothing; the corpse was thrust into a place where the masons of the Vatican kept their tools, and one of the workmen, out of charity or superstition, lit a tallow candle beside it. In the end, the maggiordomo paid for a deal coffin, and Monsignor Segni gave five scudi an English pound to have the body taken away and buried.
Close to the Piazza Navona stands the famous mutilated group, known as Pasquino, of which the mere name conveys a better idea of the Roman character than volumes of description, for it was here that the pasquinades were published, by affixing them to a pedestal at the corner of the Palazzo Braschi. And one of Pasquino's bitterest jests was directed against Olimpia Maldachini.
Another pair of eyes was at work, belonging to a very handsome, ruddy youth who had been at the Duke's left hand. Olimpia needed no nudge from the Captain to tell her who this noble rider might be. Guarino Guarini for a florin! And so it was. "Yes," said Mosca, "that is my most intrepid master.
"I will give it to Countess Lionella as your dying gift, Signor Capitano." The name smacked him in the face; he shook his head like a worried bull, or as a dog shakes water from his pelt. Olimpia, too, was interested, and for the first time. With face fixed between her hands, she leaned both elbows on the table, watching. "Is the Countess Lionella your mistress?" she asked.
And it must indeed have been so; for Olimpia never uttered any other words than those already mentioned. And when Nathanael himself in his clear and sober moments, as, for instance, directly after waking in a morning, thought about her utter passivity and taciturnity, he only said, "What are words but words? The glance of her heavenly eyes says more than any tongue of earth.
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