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Updated: May 25, 2025
Gilda, who is waiting in the street, hears this and makes up her mind to die instead of her lover. She enters the house, and is promptly murdered by Sparafucile. Her body, sewn up in a sack, is handed over at the appointed hour to Rigoletto. The jester, in triumph, is about to hurl the body into the river, when he hears the Duke singing in the distance.
With a woman's devotion she springs forward to save the Duke's life, knocks at the door, and demands admittance. Sparafucile opens it, and as she enters stabs her. He then thrusts her body into a sack, and delivers it to her father as the body of the man whom he had agreed to slay.
There she is found by her father, and to his horror she confesses that she loves the Duke. He determines to punish his daughter's seducer, and hires a bravo named Sparafucile to put him out of the way. This worthy beguiles the Duke, by means of the charms of his sister Maddalena, to a lonely inn on the banks of the river, promising to hand over his body to Rigoletto at midnight.
Pretending that it is Count Ceprano's wife whom they are about to abduct, they even make Rigoletto assist in the plot and help convey his own daughter to the Duke's apartments. In his blind fury when he discovers the trick that has been played upon him, he hires Sparafucile, a professional assassin, to kill the Duke.
Gerald turned, without much thinking, to look off in the direction whence it came and single out the figure with which it was associated, when he was surprised to find the figure he sought almost under his nose. Not more than six feet from him were to be seen the tattered mantle and ragged plume of Sparafucile; likewise the thick crow's-beak of the black domino.
Maddalena pleads tearfully for the life of her handsome lover, but Sparafucile is a man of honour, and will not break his contract with the jester. Rigoletto has paid for a body, and a body he must have. However, he consents, should any stranger visit the inn that night, to kill him in the Duke's place.
The bravo allures the Duke to his house, intending to carry out his agreement; but his sister, Magdalena, is so fascinated with the handsome stranger, that she determines to save him. Sparafucile at first will not listen to her, but finally promises if any one else comes to the house before the time agreed upon for the murder he shall be the victim.
Rigoletto meanwhile disguises his daughter in male attire in order that she may escape to Verona; but before she sets out he takes her to the vicinity of Sparafucile's house, that she may witness the perfidy of the Duke. While outside, she overhears the quarrel between Sparafucile and Magdalena, and learns his intention to murder the Duke, who is even then sleeping in the house.
One wore the costume of a bravo of old times, picturesque, disreputable, an operatic Sparafucile in tattered mantle and ragged plume. The other was in a black satin domino, and had the face of a crow, a great black beak projecting from a black mask. They stood a little way inside of the door as if waiting to be addressed. There was silence for a moment, while the others waited likewise.
Her History, as she related it to me, was brief, but amazing. Both her Father and the Cardinal died about two years after her return from Captivity; but she found a new guardian in my old friend Captain Night, or Don Ercolo Sparafucile di San Lorenzo, the Knight of Malta, who had retired from that Island to end his days in France.
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