The phase, through which this remarkable mind now passed, may be summed in a word—Penitence.
He turned with terror and aversion from the world, and begged passionately to remain in the convent. To him, convent nurtured, it was like a bird returning wounded, wearied, to its gentle nest.
He passed his novitiate in prayer, and mortification, and pious reading and meditation.
The Princess Claelia's spy went home and told her that Gerard was certainly dead, the manner of his death unknown at present.
She seemed literally stunned. When, after a long time, she found breath to speak at all, it was to bemoan her lot, cursed with such ready tools. “So soon,” she sighed; “see how swift these monsters are to do ill deeds. They come to us in our hot blood, and first tempt us with their venal daggers, then enact the mortal deeds we ne'er had thought on but for them.”
Ere many hours had passed, her pity for Gerard and hatred of his murderer had risen to fever heat; which with this fool was blood heat.
“Poor soul! I cannot call thee back to life. But he shall never live that traitorously slew thee.”
And she put armed men in ambush, and kept them on guard all day, ready, when Lodovico should come for his money, to fall on him in a certain antechamber and hack him to pieces.
“Strike at his head,” said she, “for he weareth a privy coat of mail; and if he goes hence alive your own heads shall answer it.”
And so she sat weeping her victim, and pulling the strings of machines to shed the blood of a second for having been her machine to kill the first.