Vittoria disengaged herself from the countess. "Speak to me," she said,
dismayed by the look of what seemed an exaltation of madness in Barto's
visage, but firm as far as the trembling of her limbs would let her be.

He dropped to her feet and kissed them.

"Emilia Alessandra Belloni! Vittoria! Countess Alessandra Ammiani! pity
me. Hear this:--I hated you as the devil is hated. Yesterday I woke
up in prison to hear that I must adore you. God of all the pits of
punishment! was there ever one like this? I had to change heads."

It was the language of a distorted mind, and lamentable to hear when a
sob shattered his voice.

"Am I mad?" he asked piteously, clasping his temples.

"You are as we are, if you weep," said Vittoria, to sooth him.

"Then I have been mad!" he cried, starting. "I knew you a wicked
virgin--signora contessa, confess to me, marriage has changed you. Has
it not changed you? In the name of the Father of the Saints, help me out
of it:--my brain reels backwards. You were false, but marriage--It acts
in this way with you women; yes, that we know--you were married, and you
said, 'Now let us be faithful.' Did you not say that? I am forgiving,
though none think it. You have only to confess. If you will not,--oh!"
He smote his face, groaning.

Carlo spoke a stern word in an undertone; counselling him to be gone.

"If you will not--what was she to do?" Barto cut the question to
interrogate his strayed wits. "Look at me, Countess Alessandra. I was in
the prison. I heard that my Rosellina had a tight heart. She cried
for her master, poor heathen, and I sprang out of the walls to her.
There--there--she lay like a breathing board; a woman with a body like a
coffin half alive; not an eye to show; nothing but a body and a whisper.
She perished righteously, for she disobeyed. She acted without my
orders: she dared to think! She will be damned, for she would have
vengeance before she went. She glorified you over me--over Barto Rizzo.
Oh! she shocked my soul. But she is dead, and I am her slave. Every word
was of you. Take another head, Barto Rizzo your old one was mad: she
said that to my soul. She died blessing you above me. I saw the last bit
of life go up from her mouth blessing you. It's heard by this time in
heaven, and it's written. Then I have had two years of madness. If she
is right, I was wrong; I was a devil of hell. I know there's an eye
given to dying creatures, and she looked with it, and she said,