He did not as yet feel the courage to examine that fatal cross, where he had experienced such painful emotions, even before he knew of the tie of blood that bound him to the bandit of Ætna. But a huge vulture, starting up suddenly from the very foot of the cross, forced him involuntarily to turn his eyes in that direction. For a moment he thought that he was the victim of a ghastly hallucination. A dead body lay in a pool of blood at the spot from which the vulture had fled.
Frozen with horror, Michel and his uncle drew near and recognized the body of Abbé Ninfo, half disfigured by pistol shots fired at point-blank range. The murder had been premeditated or committed with extraordinary sang-froid, for the perpetrator had taken the time and trouble to write with chalk, in small letters, close together, on the black lava pedestal of the cross, this ferociously concise inscription:
"Here was found, eighteen years ago to-day, the body of a celebrated brigand, Il Destatore, Prince of Castro-Reale, the avenger of the woes of his country.
"Here will be found to-day the body of his assassin, Abbé Ninfo, who has confessed his participation in the crime. So cowardly a champion would not have dared to strike openly so gallant a man. He led him into a trap, into which he himself has fallen at last, after eighteen years of unpunished crimes.
"More fortunate than Castro-Reale, who was struck down by slaves, Ninfo has fallen by the hand of a free man.
"If you wish to know who condemned the Destatore and paid for his murder, ask Satan, who, within an hour, will receive before his tribunal the wicked soul of Cardinal Hieronimo de Palmarosa.
"Do not accuse Castro-Reale's widow: she is innocent.
"Michel de Castro-Reale, there is still much blood to be shed before your father's death is avenged!
"He who writes these lines is the bastard of Castro-Reale, whom men call the Piccinino and the Justicier d'aventure. He it was who killed the knave Ninfo. He did it at sunrise, to the sound of the bells which announced the death agony of Cardinal Palmarosa. He did it so that it may not be thought that all villains can die in their beds.
"Let the first man who reads this inscription copy or remember it and carry it to the people of Catania!"