"He will live," he said. "No vital part has been touched."
It seemed as though the Tarnowska tragedy was to end in a trial for attempted murder only, but Fate was relentless, for the chief surgeon who had pronounced Kamarowsky's life to be safe suddenly went mad in the hospital ward and ordered the stitches to be removed from the healing wound. A few hours afterwards Kamarowsky died in agony, and the last words of his delirium were a message of love for Marie, the woman who had planned his death and who had tricked his best friend into committing the crime.
The three accomplices spent over two years in prison before being arraigned, and the trial was a protracted affair in spite of the fullest confessions by the prisoners. Sensations were innumerable during the proceedings and there were many emotional scenes, and on May 20th, 1910, the Venice jury brought in a verdict of guilty, adding a rider to the effect that the countess and Naumoff were suffering from partial mental decay. Prilukoff was sentenced to ten years' solitary confinement; Marie Tarnowska to eight years' and four months' imprisonment, and Naumoff to three years and one month, the time already spent in gaol to be included.
As for Marie Tarnowska, the beauty who had ruined many lives, she went to her punishment as if in a trance. All her scheming, all her heartlessness and greed only brought her in the end to a convict's garb and years of unceasing and humiliating labour. And from the cell she passed to obscurity.
[CHAPTER II]
AN INFAMOUS FEMALE POISONER
Gesina Gottfried was, as a girl, plump and pretty, bright and pert, and the young men of the town in Germany in which she was born never let her know what loneliness meant. She had, of course, numerous suitors; and, while the social position of her parents was a poor one, she did not hesitate to declare that she would only marry a man likely to make money and give her the luxuries for which she craved. This was regarded as a good joke by her acquaintances, for in those days the status of women in Germany was even lower than it is to-day, and they were regarded, after they had lost their youth and their looks, as on a level with the beasts of the field—it was no uncommon sight to see women harnessed to the plough—and they were expected to toil all day long.
However, pretty Gesina was humoured, and, after taking stock of all her lovers, her choice alighted upon one named Miltenberg. He had a small business of his own, was reputed to possess a considerable sum in the savings bank, and bore the reputation of being ambitious, and, therefore, certain to make more money. Gesina's parents cordially approved of her decision, and at the age of seventeen the girl became a wife. Within three years she was the mother of two fine children, and the small world in which the Miltenbergs lived envied them.
But the truth was that the marriage had proved a miserable fiasco. The young bride had not taken long to discover that her husband was an improvident drunkard, who was heavily in debt and who lived on the verge of the gaol. Whenever she remonstrated he treated her cruelly, and it was only Gesina's pride that prevented her denouncing him. But she was compelled to conceal her grief because she would not give her jealous girl friends and former rivals an opportunity to jeer at her, for she had boasted often that she was going to be a lady and that when she was married she would have a servant of her own. They had derided her then, and she would not tell them now that she had made a mistake in marrying Miltenberg, the drunkard and wife-beater.