ed to step out briskly, so that within
another ten minutes that note would surely be in the box, for no power in
the world could prevent it, since such was his express determination.
Never would he commit such a crime as to allow people to be poisoned.

But he was suffering such abominable torture. That Benedetta and that
Dario had raised such a tempest of jealous hatred within him! For them he
forgot Lisbeth whom he loved, and even that flesh of his flesh, the child
of whom he was so proud. All sex as he was, eager to conquer and subdue,
he had never cared for facile loves. His passion was to overcome. And now
there was a woman in the world who defied him, a woman forsooth whom he
had bought, whom he had married, who had been handed over to him, but who
would never, never be his. Ah! in the old days, to subdue her, he would
if needful have fired Rome like a Nero; but now he asked himself what he
could possibly do to prevent her from belonging to another. That galling
thought made the blood gush from his gaping wound. How that woman and her
lover must deride him! And to think that they had sought to turn him to
ridicule by a baseless charge, an arrant lie which still and ever made
him smart, all proof of its falsity to the contrary. He, on his side, had
accused them in the past without much belief in what he said, but now the
charges he had imputed to them must come true, for they were free, freed
at all events of the religious bond, and that no doubt was their only
care. And then visions of their happiness passed before his eyes,
infuriating him. Ah! no, ah! no, it was impossible, he would rather
destroy the world!

Then, as he and Pierre turned out of the Corso Vittorio Emanuele to
thread the old narrow tortuous streets leading to the Via Giulia, he
pictured himself dropping the note into the letter-box at the palazzo.
And next he conjured up what would follow. The note would lie in the
letter-box till morning. At an early hour Don Vigilio, the secretary, who
by the Cardinal's express orders kept the key of the box, would come
down, find the note, and hand it to his Eminence, who never allowed
another to open any communication addressed to him. And then the figs
would be thrown away, there would be no further possibility of crime, the
black world would in all prudence keep silent. But if the note should not
be in the letter-box, what would happen then? And admitting that
supposition he pictured the figs placed on the