Don Gesualdo answered: 'I am come to tell you that you have condemned an innocent woman.'
The judge looked at him with sardonic derision and contempt.
'What more?' he asked. 'If she be innocent, will you tell me who is guilty?'
'I am,' replied the priest.
At his trial he never spoke.
With his head bowed and his hands clasped, he stood in the cage where she had stood, and never replied by any single word to the repeated interrogations of his judges. Many witnesses were called, and all they said testified to the apparent truth of his self-accusation. Those who had always vaguely suspected him, all those who had seen him close the door of the sacristy on the crowd when he had borne the murdered man within, the mule drivers who had seen him digging at night under the great poplars, the sacristan who had been awakened by him that same night so early, even his old housekeeper, though she swore that he was a lamb, a saint, an angel, a creature too good for earth, a holy man whose mind was distraught by fasting, by visions, these all, either wilfully or ignorantly, bore witness which confirmed his own confession. The men of law had the mould and grass dug up under the Grand Duke's poplar, and when the blood-stained knife was found therein, the very earth, it seemed, yielded up testimony against him.
In the end, after many weeks of investigation, Generosa was released and Don Gesualdo was sentenced in her place.
Falko Melegari 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.'
Her husband always laughed, and said in answer: 'He was guilty, be sure; it was I who frightened him into confession; those black rats of the Church have livers as white as their coats are black.'