“To de’ Medici. Let me go. Only you could have saved me, and you will not; and it is right.”
Never quitting his hold, he turned from me, with a wild gesture of his free arm.
“It was her life or yours,” I said. “Make it my curse, if you will, that I chose the dearer to me.”
With a mad groan, he snatched me from my feet, and, holding me fiercely against his breast, carried me out and to the foot of the steps.
[The End]
NOTES.
[1] Diana Please Born circa 1770.
[2] scapegoat admiral The unhappy patriot Caracciolo, whose hurried execution at the yardarm of the Minerva raised such a storm of mingled protest and justification at the time. Madame Please’s insinuation must be accepted, if at all, as characteristic; yet there is no denying that Caracciolo’s court-martial (on a charge of deserting his king; to which the culprit pleaded very reasonably that it was his king who had deserted him), conviction by a narrow margin of votes, vindictive sentence, and hasty despatch thereon, afforded the great captain’s enemies the means to as unpleasant an indictment as any they could bring against his conduct of this unhappy Naples business.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES.
Minor spelling inconsistencies (e.g. caldron/cauldron, counterbuff/counter-buff, gravel-pit/gravel pit, etc.) have been preserved.