The suffocated cries, echoing from house to house, reached them now, like a continuous but indistinct rumbling. At moments there was silence and then you could hear the great fluttering of the ash trees in front of the palace, which seemed as if already abandoned.
“My son! Where is he?” again asked the old man, in a quivering, squeaking voice. “Call him! I wish to see him.”
He trembled upon his bed, not only because he was a paralytic, but also because of fear.
At the time of the first seditious movement of the day before, at the cries of about a hundred youths, who had come under the balcony to shout against the latest extortions of the Duke of Ofena, he had been overcome by such a foolish fright, that he had wept like a little girl, and had spent the night invoking the Saints of Paradise. The thought of death and of his danger gave rise to an indescribable terror in that paralytic old man, already half dead, in whom the last breaths of life were so painful. He did not wish to die.
“Luigi! Luigi!” he began to cry in his anguish.
All the place was filled with the sharp rattling of the window glasses, caused by the rush of the wind. From time to time one could hear the banging of a door, and the sound of precipitate steps and sharp cries.
“Luigi!”
II
The Duke ran up. He was somewhat pale and excited, although endeavouring to control himself. He was tall and robust, his beard still black on his heavy jaws. From his mouth, full and imperious, came forth explosive outbursts; his voracious eyes were troubled; his strong nose, covered with red spots, quivered.
“Well, then?” asked Don Filippo, breathlessly, with a rattling sound, as though suffocated.