'I will not go away unless she tells me herself, do you hear? Bianca Maria!' the Marquis called out, going up close to the bed.
She looked at her father with the greatest intensity, as if she was answering him.
'Bianca Maria,' shouted the exasperated old man, 'is it true that you do not want to have me in your room? Say yourself if it is true. I do not believe this man. You must say it yourself.'
'It is true,' she said in a very clear voice, looking at her father.
He cast down his eyes, where the last tears of old age were showing, and his head sank on his breast, overcome by the inflexible punishment that came to him from the raving girl—from his dying victim. He went out without turning round. And stooping, as if he were a hundred years old, alone, speechless, he went away to what had been his study, where only an old table and a chair were left. There, lying forward with his face in his hands, with no conception either of time or things, the old sinner sank into the immeasurable bitterness of his punishment. Sometimes Bianca Maria's voice came to him, feeble or loud, ever telling Amati:
'I do not want to die—I will not die! Save me! save me! I am only twenty! I will not die!'
The voice, the despairing words, said in delirium, but which still seemed to be a lament and a curse, had a cruel effect on him. He had not strength left to get up and go out, to leave the house alone, to die like a dog on some church steps, unwept for and unregretted. He did not get up to go beside the dying girl, for his daughter had turned him out, keeping by her the only person she had loved.
'I will not die, love! I will not die!' the delirious girl was saying.
'She is right—she is right,' her father thought, giving a start.
Whilst the hours went by he heard, from where he was, the doctor going backwards and forwards, in his effort to save the girl's life, the hurried orders, Giovanni going out and the assistant doctor coming in. He had no right now to come forward and know what was going on, and, in fact, he was forgotten there, as if he had been dead for years and years, as if no Marquis di Formosa had ever existed. Would it not be better for him if he were dead, since everyone had forsaken him? 'It is what I deserve,' he thought to himself.