‘And then—what then, Marietta?’
‘You were in that case to have been betrayed into the hands of the English, or poisoned! The scheme to accomplish the first was already planned. I have here the letters which are to accredit me to see and converse with Sir Horace Mann, at Florence; and which I mean to deliver too. I am resolved to trace out to the very last who are the accomplices in this guilt. The world is well edified by tales of mob violence and bloodshed. Even genius seeks its inspiration in inveighing against popular excesses. It is time to show that crimes lurk under purple as well as rags, and that the deadliest vengeances are often devised beneath gilded ceilings. We knew of one once, Gherardi, who could have told men these truths—one who carried from this world with him the “funeral trappings of the monarchy” and the wail of the people.
‘Of whom did she speak?’ asked the friar.
‘Of Gabriel Riquetti, whom she loved,’ and the last words were whispered by Gerald in her ear.
Marietta held down her head, and as she covered her face with her hands muttered—‘But who loved not her!’
‘Gabriel Riquetti,’ broke in the friar, ‘had more of good and bad in him than all the saints and all the devils that ever warred. He had the best of principles and the worst of practices, and never did a wicked thing but he could show you a virtuous reason for it.’
Struck by the contemptuous glance of Marietta, Gerald followed the look she gave, and saw that the friar’s eyes were bloodshot, and his face purple with excess.
CHAPTER XXIII. THE END
From Marietta Gerald heard how, with that strange fatality of inconsistency which ever seemed to accompany the fortunes of the Stuarts, none proved faithful followers save those whose lives of excess or debauchery rendered them valueless; and thus the drunken Fra, whose wild snatches of song and ribaldry now broke in upon the colloquy, was no other than the Carmelite, Kelly, the once associate and corrupter of his father.