IV
A sonorous shouting greeted him. Five, ten, twenty bundles of lighted sticks were simultaneously thrust beneath the place where he was standing. The glare illuminated the animated faces, eager for carnage, the steel of the guns, the iron axes. The faces of the torch-bearers were sprinkled with flour, as a protection from the sparks, and in the midst of their whitened faces their reddish eyes shone singularly. The black smoke arose in the air, fading away rapidly. The flames whistled and, stretching up on one side, were blown by the wind like infernal hair. The thinnest and dryest reeds bent over quickly, reddening, breaking down and cracking like sky-rockets. It was a gay sight.
“Mazzagrogna! Mazzagrogna! To death with the seducer! To death with the crooked man!” they all cried, crowding together to throw insults at him.
Mazzagrogna stretched out his hands, as though to subdue the clamour; he gathered together all his vocal force and began, in the name of the king, as if promulgating a law to infuse respect into the people.
“In the name of His Majesty, Ferdinando II, and by the grace of God, King of both Sicilies, of Jerusalem——”
“To death with the thief!”
Two or three shots resounded among the cries, and the speaker, struck on his chest and on his forehead, staggered, throwing his hands above his head and falling downward. Upon falling, his head stuck between two of the spikes of the iron railing and hung over the edge like a pumpkin. The blood began to drip down upon the soil beneath.
This spectacle rejoiced the people. The uproar arose to the stars. Then the bearer of the pole holding the hanging corpse came under the balcony and held the body of Vincenzio Murro near to that of the majordomo. The pole was wavering in the air and the people, dumbfounded, watched as the two bodies jolted together. An improvised poet, alluding to the Albino-like eyes of Mazzagrogna and to the bleared ones of the messenger, shouted these lines:
“Lean over the window, you fried eyes,
That you may look upon the open skies!”
A great outburst of laughter greeted the jest of the poet and the laughter spread from mouth to mouth like the sound of water falling down a stony valley.
A rival poet shouted:
“Look, what a blind man can see!
If he closes his eyes and tries to flee.”
The laughter was renewed.
A third one cried out:
“Oh, face of a dead brute!
Your crazy hair stands resolute!”
Many more imprecations were cast at Mazzagrogna. A ferocious joy had invaded the hearts of the people. The sight and smell of blood intoxicated those nearest. Tomaso of Beffi and Rocco Fuici challenged each other to hit with a stone the hanging head of the dead man, which was still warm, and at every blow moved and shed blood. A stone, thrown by Rocco Fuici, at last, hit it in the centre, causing a hollow sound. The spectators applauded, but they had had enough of Mazzagrogna.
Again a cry arose, “Cassaura! Cassaura! To death! To death!”
Fabrizio and Ferdinandino Scioli, pushing their way through the crowd, were instigating the most zealous ones. A terrible shower of stones, like a dense hailstorm, mingled with gun-shots, beat against the windows of the palace, the window panes falling upon the assailing hoards and the stones rebounding. A few of the bystanders were hurt.
When they were through with the stones and had used all their bullets, Ferdinandino Scioli cried out, “Down with the doors!”
And the cry, repeated from mouth to mouth, shook every hope of salvation out of the Duke of Ofena.