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Updated: May 1, 2025
It was a foliated jester's cap, with a bell hanging from every point, which gave out a tinkling sound as I picked it up. I let it fall again as though it had scorched me, the memory of what stood between Madonna Paola and me rising like a warning spectre in my mind.
That hope has borne no fruit; the little thing, I spoke of has not come to pass. It rested with Madonna Paola, here. She had it in her hands to effect your salvation, but she has refused. Your blood rests on her head." She shuddered at the words, and a low moan escaped her. She covered her face with her hands. A moment I stood looking at her; then I shifted my glance to Ramiro.
"What is it you say?" "Well may you doubt your ears," he groaned. "But, Vergine Santissima! it is the truth. Madonna Paola, that sweet angel of God, lies cold and stiff. They found her so this morning." "God of Heaven!" I cried out, and leaving him abruptly I dashed down the steps.
Madonna Paola remained at the Sforza Palace, and I saw her only once during the two mouths that followed, and then it was about the streets, and she had little more than a greeting for me as she passed. At her side rode her brother, a splendid blaze of finery, falcon on wrist. My days were spent in reading and reflection, for there was naught else to do.
About this time Paola, my contract-wife, who was everything that a wife should be in my opinion, became a little homesick and spoke often of the home she had left at Sauxal, a small gulf-coast port in Lower California.
"Who was she?" I exclaimed eagerly, my heart sinking as I heard the doctor say this; "what was her name?" "Donna Paola Salabriata," he answered. "Without being allowed to take a last farewell of her friends, or to communicate with any one, she was led out into the great square, followed by a party of soldiers," continued the doctor, not observing my agitation.
Their geographical notions are vague; they have barely heard of Cosenza or of Cotrone, and of Paola not at all; it would as soon occur to them to set out for Morocco as for Calabria. How shall I get along with people whose language is a barbarous dialect? Am I aware that the country is in great part pestilential? la febbre!
I bought it and packed it myself. I am waiting for it. You shall see. It bears a Christ on a cross, between the Virgin and Saint John, the date of 1400, and the arms of Malatesta Monsieur Dechartre, you are not listening enough. Listen to me attentively. In 1400 Lorenzo Ghiberti, fleeing from war and the plague, took refuge at Rimini, at Paola Malatesta's house.
There, by the high-altar, I saw a form that seemed at first luminous and ghostly, but in which presently I recognised Madonna Paola, the dim rays of the distant tapers finding out the white robe with which her limbs were hung. She was alone, and I knew then that it was but the very natural fear consequent upon awakening in such a place that had provoked the cry I had heard.
In that instant a piercing scream rang through the stillness of the church, and startled me so that I stood there for some seconds, frozen in horror, a hundred wild conjectures leaping to my mind. Had Ramiro remained hidden, and was he returned? Did the scream mean that Madonna Paola had been awakened by his rough hands?
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