Nisida, there to give
himself up peaceably to the pleasure of fishing, for which he had at all
times had a particular predilection (a proof appeared among the documents
of the case that the prince had regularly been present every other year
at the tunny-fishing on his property at Palermo); that when once he was
thus hidden in the island, Gabriel might have recognised him, having gone
with his sister to the procession, a few days before, and had, no doubt,
planned to murder him. On the day before the night of the crime, the
absence of Gabriel and the discomposure of his father and sister had been
remarked. Towards evening the prince had dismissed his servant, and gone
out alone, as his custom was, to walk by the seashore. Surprised by the
storm and not knowing the byways of the island, he had wandered round the
fisherman's house, seeking a shelter; then Gabriel, encouraged by the
darkness and by the noise of the tempest, which seemed likely to cover
the cries of his victim, had, after prolonged hesitation, resolved to
commit his crime, and having fired two shots at the unfortunate young man
without succeeding in wounding him, had put an end to him by blows of the
axe; lastly, at the moment when, with Solomon's assistance, he was about
to throw the body into the sea, the prince's servants having appeared,
they had gone up to the girl's room, and, inventing their absurd tale,
had cast themselves on their knees before the Virgin, in order to mislead
the authorities. All the circumstances that poor Solomon cited in his
son's favour turned against him: the ladder at Nisida's window belonged
to the fisherman; the dagger which young Brancaleone always carried upon
him to defend himself had evidently been taken from him after his death,
and Gabriel had hastened to break it, so as to destroy, to the best of
his power, the traces of his crime. Bastiano's evidence did not receive a
minute's consideration: he, to destroy the idea of premeditation,
declared that the young fisherman had left him only at the moment when
the storm broke over the island; but, in the first place, the young diver
was known to be Gabriel's most devoted friend and his sister's warmest
admirer, and, in the second, he had been seen to land at Torre during the
same hour in which he had affirmed that he was near to Nisida. As for
the prince's passion for the poor peasant girl, the magistrates simply
shrugged their shoulders at the ridiculous assertion of that,