"Most Reverend Father, by your hopes of Heaven, I implore you—give me my boy again! il mio dilettissimo figlio! See, I sign the parchment!" and with feverish strokes she wrote her name; then with hands strained tightly together, awaited her answer.
Fabrici moved uncomfortably, turning his gaze away from the stricken, overwrought face: his cruel triumph began to seem unworthy.
But Rizzo calmly affixed the Royal Seal, covering it with the small wooden case prepared for its protection and knotting it firmly in place with the silken fillets—so careful lest a bruise should show upon the fair, waxen surface—he who could crush a woman's heart to breaking, or watch the life-blood dripping from some cruel wound that he had made, as lightly as he would drop the red wax for his stolen signet—it was all one to his deadly purpose.
"Thanks, your Majesty," he said, "there are yet other documents to be signed," and he laid them before her.
"My child!" she cried in extremity; "have mercy—restore him to me—I have fulfilled your pleasure!"
"Your Majesty hath forgotten these," said Rizzo, "and the penalty—if they are left unsigned."
Again she seized the pen and wrote her name as with her life-blood—great veins starting out on her white forehead, her eyes dim and blurred, her heart beating so that she scarce could trace the words that seemed an irony:
"Caterina, Regina!"
"At last!" she gasped, as the pen fell from her hand—"Madre Sanctissima—they will bring my boy!"