"You will try, but you will not succeed. God protects him, and he wears the invisible armor of my love to shield him from your hate."
"Very well. Pray for him if you will; but, as sure as I live, I will find his vulnerable heel!"
As he said this, Laura turned pale, and Strozzi remarked her pallor with a malicious pleasure. "Ah! your faith is not strong! My poisoned arrows will find the flaw, and upon him shall be avenged every pang that you have inflicted upon my bleeding heart. You know that he is here—I see it by your altered demeanor."
"Yes, yes, I know it."
"Be not too overjoyed thereat: for the daggers of my bravoes are keen and sure, and the lagoons are deep, and give not up their dead."
"You would not sully your soul with secret murder!" exclaimed Laura, shuddering.
"That would I. He is my rival, and he shall be put out of my way— that is all."
"No—that is not all. You dare not murder a prince, a hero upon whom the eyes of all Europe are fixed in admiration. Such a man as he is not to be put out of the way with impunity. Were you to murder Eugene of Savoy, know that I myself would be your accuser; and your uncle, the doge himself, is not powerful enough to save your head from the executioner."
"What care I for the executioner's axe, who for three years have been stretched upon the rack of your aversion? So I make sure that he has gone before me—so I have the sweet revenge of sending him to Tartarus, what care I how soon I follow him thither?"
"You are a monster!" exclaimed Laura.