'It will not be my fault,' said Generosa, and he saw in her the woman's lust of vanity which finds food for its pride in the blood shed for her, as the tigress does, and even the gentle hind.
He remained an hour or more with her, exhausting every argument which his creed and his sympathy could suggest to him as having any possible force in it to sway this wayward and sin-bound soul; but he knew that his words were poured on her ear as uselessly as water on a stone floor. She was in a manner grateful to him as her friend, in a manner afraid of that vague majesty of some unknown power which he represented to her; but she hated her husband, she adored her lover;—he could not stir her from those two extremes of passion. He left her with apprehension and a pained sense of his own impotence. She promised him that she would provoke Tassilo no more that night, and this poor promise was all that he could wring from her. It was late when he left the mill-house. He feared Candida would be alarmed at his unusual absence; and hastened, with trouble on his soul, towards the village, lying white and lonely underneath the midsummer moon. He had so little influence, so slender a power to persuade or warn, to counsel or command; he felt afraid that he was unworthy of his calling.
'I should have been better in the cloister,' he thought sadly; 'I have not the key to human hearts.'
He went on through a starry world of fire-flies, making luminous the cut corn, the long grass, the high hedges, and, entering his presbytery, crept noiselessly up the stairs to his chamber, thankful that the voice of his housekeeper did not cry to him out of the darkness to know why he had so long tarried. He slept little that night, and was up, as was his wont, by daybreak.
It was still dark when the church bell was clanging above his head for the first office.
It was the day of Peter and of Paul. Few people came to the early mass; some peasants who wanted to have the rest of the day clear; some women, thrifty housewives who were up betimes; Candida herself; no others. The lovely morning light streamed in, cool and roseate; there were a few lilies and roses on the altar; some red draperies floated in the doorway; the nightingales in the wild-rose hedge sang all the while, their sweet voices crossing the monotonous Latin recitatives. The mass was just over, when into the church from without there arose a strange sound, shrill and yet hoarse, inarticulate and yet uproarious; it came from the throats of many people, all screaming, and shouting, and talking, and swearing together. The peasants and the women, who were on their knees, scrambled to their feet, and rushed to the door, thinking the earth had opened and the houses were falling. Gesualdo came down from the altar and strove to calm them, but they did not heed him, and he followed them despite himself. The whole village seemed out—man, woman, and child—the nightingales grew dumb under their outcry.
'What is it?' asked Gesualdo.
Several voices shouted back to him, 'Tasso Tassilo has been murdered!'
'Ah!'
Gesualdo gave a low cry, and leaned against the stem of a cypress tree to save himself from falling. What use had been his words that night?