Cantiam tutti: "Viva il Moro!"'
Then all vanished, and he sank in a profound slumber. When he awoke he fancied but two or three minutes had elapsed. He left the chapel, and saw through the frosted window-pane the grey light of the winter's dawn.
X
Il Moro returned to the Sala della Rocchetta, where reigned a mournful silence. A woman passing with a basket of swaddling clothes, approached him and said.
'Her Excellency has been delivered.'
'Does she live?' he stammered, very pale.
'Yes, she lives; but the infant is still-born. She is very weak; and she desires to speak with your Highness.'
He went to her room; and there on the pillows he saw a small shrunken face like a child's, pallid and calm, with great eyes surrounded by livid circles, and turbid as if a spider's web were drawn over them; familiar and yet strange. He bent over her silently.
'Send for Isabella! Quickly!' she gasped.