"

He stopped, looked up, and stared about him. His face had undergone an
awful change. Then he returned to the letter, and in jerky sentences he
read again:

"'Come to me then ... my dear one ... my beloved....'"

Until that moment an evil spirit in Roma had been saying to her, in
spite of herself: "Can it be possible that while you have been going
through all those privations for his sake he has been consoling himself
with another woman?" Impossible! The letter was a manifest imposture.
She wouldn't believe a word of it.

But Bruno was still in the toils of his temptation. "Look here," he
said, lifting a pitiful face. "What with the bread and water and the
lashes I don't know that my head isn't light, and I'm fancying I see
things...."

The paper of the letter was crackling in his hand, and his husky voice
was breaking. Save for these sounds and the tramp--tramp--tramp of the
soldiers drilling outside, there was a dead silence in the court.

"You are not fancying at all, Rocco," said the Public Prosecutor. "We
are all sorry for you, and I am sure the illustrious gentlemen of the
tribunal pity you. Your comrade, your master, the man you have followed
and trusted, is false to you. He is a traitor to his friend, his
country, and his King. The denunciation you made in prison is true in
substance and in fact. I advise you to adhere to it, and to cast
yourself on the clemency of the court."

"Here--you--shut up your head and let a man think," said Bruno.

Roma tried to rise. She could not. Then she tried to cry out something,
but her tongue clave to the roof of her mouth. Would Bruno break down at
the last moment?

Bruno, whose face was convulsed with agony, began to laugh in a
delirious way. "So my friend is false to me, is he? Very well, I'll be
revenged."

He reeled a little and the letter dropped from his hand, floated a
moment in the air, and fell to the ground a pace or two farther on.

"Yes, by God, I'll be revenged," he cried, and he laughed again.

He stopped, lifted one leg, seemed to pull at his boot, and again stood
erect.

"I always knew the hour would come when I should find myself in a tight
place, and I've always kept something about me to help me to get out of
it. Here it is now."

In an instant, before any one could be aware of what he was doing, he
had uncorked a small bottle which he held in his hand and swallowed the
contents.

"Long live David Rossi!" he cried, and he flung the empt