The leaders departed, to intrigue for the vacant posts, and devise tortures for Benedetto. Manto sat on the rampart, still and silent as its stones. Anon she rose, and roved about as if distraught, reciting verses from Virgil.
Night had fallen. Benedetto lay wakeful in his cell. A female figure stood before him bearing a lamp. It was Manto.
“Benedetto,” she said, “I am a wretch, faithless to my country and to my master. I did but even now open his sacred volume at hazard, and on what did my eye first fall?
Trojaque nunc stares, Priamique arx alta maneres. But I can no other. I am a woman. May Mantua never entrust her fortunes to the like of me again! Come with me, I will release thee.”
She unlocked his chains; she guided him through the secret passage under the moat; they stood at the exit, in the open air.
“Fly,” she said, “and never again draw sword against thy mother. I will return to my house, and do that to myself which it behoved me to have done ere I released thee.”
“Manto,” exclaimed Benedetto “a truce to this folly! Forsake thy dead Duke, and that cheat of Liberty more crazy and fantastic still. Wed a living Duke in me!”
“Never!” exclaimed Manto. “I love thee more than any man living on earth, and I would not espouse thee if the earth held no other.”
“Thou canst not help thyself,” he rejoined; “thou hast revealed to me the secret of this passage. I hasten to the camp. I return in an hour with an army, and wilt thou, wilt thou not, to-morrow’s sun shall behold thee the partner of my throne!”
Manto wore a poniard. She struck Benedetto to the heart, and he fell dead. She drew the corpse back into the passage, and hurried to her home. Opening her master’s volume again, she read:
Tædet coeli convexa tueri.