In the end, after many weeks of investigation, Generosa was released, and he was sentenced in her place.
Her lover married her, and they went to live in his own country in the Lombard plains, and were happy and prosperous, and the village of Marca and the waters of its cane-shadowed stream knew them no more.
Sometimes she would say to her husband, "I cannot think that he was guilty: there was some mystery in it." And her husband always laughed, and said in answer, "He was guilty, be sure: it was I that frightened him into confession. Those black rats of the Church have livers as white as their coats are black."
Generosa did not wholly believe, but she thrust the grain of doubt away from her and played with her handsome children. And, after all, she mused, what doubt could there be? Did not Don Gesualdo himself reveal his guilt? and had he not always cared for her? and was not the whole population of Marca willing to bear witness that they had always suspected him and had only held their peace out of respect for the Church?
He himself lived two long years among the galley-slaves of the western coast: all that time he never spoke; and he was considered by the authorities to be insane. Then, in the damp and cold of the third winter, his lungs decayed, his frail strength gave way; he died of what they called consumption in the spring of the year. In his last moments there was seen a light of unspeakable ecstasy upon his face, a smile of unspeakable rapture on his mouth.
"Laus Deus libera me!" he murmured, as he died.
A bird came and sang at the narrow casement of his prison-cell as his spirit passed away. It was a nightingale,—perchance one of those who had once sung to him in the summer nights from the wild-rose hedge at Marca.
A RAINY JUNE.
From the Prince di San Zenone, Claridge's, London, to the Duchessa dell'Aquila Fulva, Monterone, near Milano, Italy.