'My lady, my lady, what can we do? Giovanni and Francesco are there. We had best stay here.'
'I am going there,' the girl insisted, going towards the kitchen.
Old Giovanni and Francesco in their shirt-sleeves were pulling at the rope with all their strength, and it hardly moved, creaking as if it was going to break. Both Giovanni's and Francesco's faces showed, besides the great fatigue they were enduring, that they were in a great fright.
Occasionally, with heaving sides and cramped arms, they gave up pulling, and cast a frightened look at each other. From the kitchen doorway, in a white wrapper, with her hair down, Bianca Maria looked on, while Margherita, standing behind her, begged her in a whisper to go away for the love of the Virgin! to go away, in God's name!
'But, in any case, what can it be?' asked Bianca Maria steadily, turning to the two men, whose growing fears deprived them of strength.
'Who can tell, my lady?' Giovanni stammered. 'This weight is not a good thing.'
But while all kept their eyes fixed on the well, waiting on in anguish, all feeling a shudder from the delay and fear of the unknown, the thing the two men were pulling up hit twice against the sides of the well, noisily from right to left. The dull, heavy noise echoed in Bianca Maria's heart, for it was the same she had heard at night. A little frightened cry came from her mouth; she pressed her nails right into her flesh, wringing her hands to keep down her alarm before the servants. But once more, with a stronger, nearer sound, the thing beat against the side of the well.
'It is coming,' said the message-boy affrightedly.
'It is coming,' Giovanni repeated in consternation.
Margherita, standing behind Bianca Maria, could not command her strained nerves; she prayed in a trembling whisper, 'Madonna, help us! Madonna, deliver us!' But what came up to the well-brink, bounding, quivering, with the bucket-rope wound three times round its neck, the chain hanging on the breast, made her yell with fright. It was a man's trunk, water and blood dripping from the forehead over the sorrowful cheeks and bared breasts, water and blood flowing from the wounded side; blood and tears were in his eyes, and over the face and breast, which all had death's livid hue.