He looked at her with a long, inquiring regard: then, without a word, he drew the linen off the dead face of her husband, and pointed to it.
She, strong as a colt and full of life as a young tree, fell headlong on the stone floor in a dead swoon.
The people gathered about the door-way and watched her suspiciously and without compassion. There was no one there who did not believe her to be the murderess. No one except Gesualdo. In that one moment when he had looked into her eyes he had felt that she was guiltless. He called Candida to her and left her, and closed the door on the curious, cruel, staring eyes of the throng without.
The people murmured: what title had he more than they to command and direct in this matter? The murder was a precious feast to them: why should he defraud them of their rights?
"He knows she is guilty," they muttered, "and he wants to screen her and give her time to recover herself and to arrange what story she shall tell."
Soon there came the sound of horses' feet on the road, and the jingling of chains and scabbards stirred the morning air: the carabineers had arrived. Then came also the syndic and petty officers of the larger village of Sant' Arturo, where the communal municipality in which Marca was enrolled had its seat of justice, its tax-offices, and its schools. There was a great noise and stir, grinding of wheels and shouting of orders, vast clouds of dust and ceaseless din of voices, loud bickerings of conflicting authorities at war with one another, and rabid inquisitiveness and greedy excitement on all sides.
In a later time they remembered against him all this which he did now.
The feast of St. Peter and St. Paul had been a day of disaster and disorder, but to the good people of Marca both these were sweet. They had something to talk of from dawn till dark, and the blacker the tragedy the merrier wagged the tongues. The soul of their vicar alone was sick within him. Since he had seen the astonished, horrified eyes of the woman Generosa he had never once doubted her, but he felt that her guilt must seem clear as the noonday to all others. Her disputes with her husband and her passion for Falko Melegari were facts known to all the village, and who else had any interest in his death? The whole of Marca pronounced as with one voice against her: the women had always hated her for her superior beauty, and the men had always borne her a grudge for her saucy disdain of them, and that way of bearing herself as though a beggar from Bocca d'Arno were a queen.
"Neighbors put up with her pride while she was on the sunny side of the street," said Candida, with grim satisfaction, "but now she is in the shade they'll fling the stones fast enough." And she was ready to fling her own stone. Generosa had always seemed an impudent jade to her, coming and talking with Don Gesualdo, as she did, at all hours, and as though the church and the sacristy were open bazaars!
How that day passed, and how he bore himself through all its functions, he never knew. It was the dead of night, when he, still dressed, and unable even to think calmly, clasping his crucifix in his hands, and pacing to and fro his narrow chamber with restless and uneven steps, heard his name called by the voice of a man in great agitation, and, looking out of his casement, saw Falko Melegari on his gray horse, which was covered with foam and sweating as from a hard gallop.