'Murdered! the Duke! Murdered! Close the gates!'
It thundered on and away. He looked at his hand once more; then turned for home.
CHAPTER XXVII
Murdered? Ay; struck down in a moment on the threshold of God's house, lest his bloody footsteps entering should desecrate its pavement; snatched away to perdition from under the very shadows of stone saints, the gleam of the golden doors fading out of the horror of his fading eyes. He had had but time for one cry—'O Mother of God!'—a soul-clutch as wild as when a drowning man grasps at a flowering reed. In vain; he is under; the fair blossom whisks erect again, dashing the tears from her eyes; the white face far below is a stone among the stones.
'So passeth the world's glory!'
The choir sang, the organ thundered on; and still their blended fervour, while the dead body was relaxing and settling into the pool itself had made, rose poignant, sharper, more unearthly, piercing with tragic utterance its own burden, until at length, flood crashing upon flood, the roar of human passion below burst and overwhelmed it.
What had happened?
This.
As the Duke entered the church by the west door, a full-bodied gentleman, dressed all in mail, with a jaque of crimson satin, had stepped from the crowd to make a way for him; which having affected to do, he had turned, and raising his velvet beret with his left hand, and dropping on one knee as if to crave some boon, had swiftly driven a dagger into Galeazzo's body, and again, as the Duke fell away from the stroke, freeing the blade, into his throat. Whereat, springing on the mortal cry that followed, flew other sparks of crimson from the body of the spectators, and pierced the doomed man with vicious stings, labouring out cries as they stabbed:—
'For my sister!'