orward,
lower and lower, pressed her lips to the lips of the dead woman,
imprinting upon them a violence of affection, stronger than all the
insults, than all the baseness of this world.

Towards eleven o'clock she tore herself reluctantly away from the spot.
Going slowly down the slippery and stony path beside her husband there
suddenly arose before her mind's eye a vision of a future meeting with
the Marchesa. She stopped, drawing herself up and clenching her fists,
and from her handsome, intelligent face there shone forth such
fierceness that, could the old lady of marble have seen her thus, have
met her at that moment, she might not have surrendered, perhaps, but she
would certainly have hastened to put herself on the defensive.

Part Second

CHAPTER I

FISHERMEN

Dr. Francesco Zerboli, Imperial and Royal Commissary of Porlezza, landed
at the Imperial and Royal _Ricevitoria_--the custom-house--at Oria, on
the tenth day of September, 1854, just as a truly imperial and royal sun
was rising above the ponderous bastions of Galbiga, glorifying the
little pink custom-house and the oleanders and beans of Signora Peppina
Bianconi, and summoning to his office, in accordance with the
regulations, Signor Carlo Bianconi, her husband, that same Receiver of
Customs who had scented conspiracy in manuscript music. Bianconi, whom
his wife called _el me Carlascia_,--"my big Charley"--and the people,
_el Biancon_, a tall man, fat and solid, with a clean-shaven chin, a
grey moustache, and the large dull eyes of a faithful mastiff, went down
to meet that other clean-shaven Imperial and Royal one, of higher rank.
There was no resemblance between the two, save in the Austrian nudity of
their chins. Zerboli, dressed in black and carefully gloved, was short
and stout, and wore a pair of fair moustaches flattened against his
sallow face, out of which peered two small, sarcastic, and scornful
sparks of eyes. His hair grew so low on his forehead that he was in the
habit of shaving off a strip, and at times a shade showed there, that
gave him the appearance of some strange beast. Quick in his movements,
in his glance, in his speech, he spoke, with easy courtesy, a nasal
Italian, having the modulations of the province of Trento. He now
informed the Receiver that he had come to hold a _convocato_--the
communal council of those days--at Castello, and that he had preferred
to come early and climb the hill while it was cool, from