the soul
of Rinaldo Guidascarpi, her angel, was glorifying you; and she thanked
the sticking of her heart, when she tried to stab you, poor fool!"

Carlo interrupted: "Now go; you have said enough."

"No, let him speak," said Vittoria. She supposed that Barto was going to
say that he had not given the order for her assassination. "You do not
wish me dead, signore?"

"Nothing that is not standing in my way, signora contessa," said Barto;
and his features blazed with a smile of happy self-justification. "I
have killed a sentinel this night: Providence placed him there. I wish
for no death, but I punish, and--ah! the cursed sight of the woman who
calls me mad for two years. She thrusts a bar of iron in an engine at
work, and says, Work on! work on! Were you not a traitress? Countess
Alessandra, were you not once a traitress? Oh! confess it; save my head.
Reflect, dear lady! it's cruel to make a man of a saintly sincerity
look back--I count the months--seventeen months! to look back seventeen
months, and see that his tongue was a clapper,--his will, his eyes,
his ears, all about him, everything, stirred like a pot on the fire. I
traced you. I saw your treachery. I said--I, I am her Day of Judgement.
She shall look on me and perish, struck down by her own treachery.
Were my senses false to me? I had lived in virtuous fidelity to
my principles. None can accuse me. Why were my senses false, if my
principles were true? I said you were a traitress. I saw it from the
first. I had the divine contempt for women. My distrust of a woman was
the eye of this brain, and I said--Follow her, dog her, find her out! I
proved her false; but her devilish cunning deceived every other man
in the world. Oh! let me bellow, for it's me she proves the mass of
corruption! Tomorrow I die, and if I am mad now, what sort of a curse is
that?

"Now to-morrow is an hour--a laugh! But if I've not been shot from a
true bow--if I've been a sham for two years--if my name, and nature,
bones, brains, were all false things hunting a shadow, Countess
Alessandra, see the misery of Barto Rizzo! Look at those two years, and
say that I had my head. Answer me, as you love your husband: are you
heart and soul with him in the fresh fight for Lombardy?" He said
this with a look penetrating and malignant, and then by a sudden flash
pitifully entreating.

Carlo feared to provoke, revolted from the thought of slaying him. "Yes,
yes," he interposed, "my wife is heart