"Stand down, Bellaroba. Castaneve, come forward."
His face just now was a sight to be seen—crumpled, infinitely prim, crow-footed like an ivied wall; but extraordinarily wise; with that tempered resolve which says, "I know Evil and I know Good, and dare be just to either." He was thinking profoundly; every one could see it. Best of the company before him Angioletto, the little Tuscan, read his thought. His own was, "Unless I fear Justice I need not fear Borso. Dante saw the death of his lady to be just. Courage then!"
"Mistress Castaneve," said Duke Borso, "you declare yourself innocent?"
"Excellency, I do, I do! Ah, Mother of God!" The panic was creeping up Olimpia's legs, to loosen the joints of her knees.
The Judge turned half. "Mistress Bellaroba, you also declare yourself innocent?"
"Yes, my lord," she said.
"Diavolo!" muttered Angioletto, "he is not 'my lord'; he is 'Magnificence.' I must scold her for this afterwards."
"The position of affairs is this," said the Duke, aloud. "One of these prisoners is guilty of the deed, and the guilty one is the liar. Now, I will not put an innocent person to death if I can avoid it; and I will not put these women to the question, because I should wring a confession of guilt from each, and be no more certain than I was before. I may have my own opinion, and may have proved it on various grounds. That again, I do not care to obtrude. I do not see that I can better the precedent set me by a very wise man and patriarch, King Solomon of Zion. Let the women judge each other. My judgment is that the innocent of these two shall hang the guilty."
The bystanders were silent, till one man shivered. The shiver swept lightly through the company like a wind in the reeds, and ran wider and wider till it stirred the farthest edge of the field. All eyes were upon the prisoners. Borso's blinked from below his shaggy brows, young Teofilo Calcagnini's were misty, Angioletto's hard and bright. Bellaroba had been motionless throughout, except when her lips moved to speak; she was motionless now. But Olimpia was panting. The unearthly quiet was only broken by that short sound for ten minutes.
"Bellaroba," then said the Duke, "what say you? You declare that you are innocent. Will you hang the guilty and go free?"