haste of
clerks and officials eager to finish their day's work and get away to
their wine and dominoes at the taverns. His hands mechanically held his
breviary; his lips mechanically repeated a Latin formula of prayer. When
all the people were gone, one of the custodians of the place touched his
arm, telling him that they were about to close the doors. He raised his
eyes like one who is wakened from a trance, and to the man said,
quietly,--

"I would see the president of the court for a moment quite alone. Is it
possible?"

After many demurs and much delay, they brought him into the presence of
the judge in a small chamber of the great palace.

"What do you want with me?" asked the judge, looking nervously at the
white face and the wild eyes of his unbidden visitant.

Gesualdo answered, "I am come to tell you that you have condemned an
innocent woman."

The judge looked at him with sardonic derision and contempt.

"What more?" he asked. "If she be innocent, will you tell me who is
guilty?"

"I am," replied the priest.

* * * * *

At his trial he never spoke.

With his head bowed and his hands clasped, he stood in the cage where
she had stood, and never replied by any single word to the repeated
interrogations of his judges. Many witnesses were called, and all they
said testified to the apparent truth of his self-accusation. Those who
had always vaguely suspected him, all those who had seen him close the
door of the sacristy on the crowd when he had borne the murdered man
within, the mule-drivers who had seen him digging at night under the
great poplars, the sacristan who had been awakened by him that same
night so early, even his old housekeeper, though she swore that he was a
lamb, a saint, an angel, a creature too good for earth, a holy man whose
mind was distraught by fasting, by visions,--these all, either wilfully
or ignorantly, bore witness which confirmed his own confession. The men
of law had the mould and grass dug up under the Grand Duke's poplar, and
when the blood-stained knife was found therein, the very earth, it
seemed, yielded up testimony against him.

In the end, after many weeks of investigation, Generosa was released,
and he was sentenced in her place.

Her lover married her, and they went to live in his own country in the
Lombard plains, and were happy and prosperous, and the village of Marca
and the waters of its cane-shadowed stream knew them no more