"As she will no longer rest in my arms, neither shall she in yours," said the Italian. "I shall assert my rights. I shall preserve them with my last breath, long as I may have denied them. That is worthy of a brave man. She is mine, and belongs to this death-bed."
"Of whom do you speak?" cried Blanden, more astonished.
"Of Giulia, your--mistress!"
"Hah, you scoundrel," cried Blanden, "I shall be forgetting that a dying man is before me, that these words are the unnecessary attacks of an expiring intellect."
"You are mistaken," said Baluzzi, but pain compelled him to stop for a time and to speak more softly. "I speak the truth."
"Fool--united to me at the altar!"
"Null and invalid, null and invalid!"
"Is there anything you wish, Baluzzi? I will gladly carry it out, but to listen longer to your wandering speech is impossible."
"Wandering speech! Haha--am I a madman? Do I tear off the bandage which the wretched surgeon, the old frontier official, put on? Do I grope in the air half unconsciously? No, my mind is clear, clear as yours, clearer, perhaps, at this moment. I can understand that the world begins to go round with you when I repeat that 'Giulia can only be your mistress, because she is--my wife!'"
"Your wife, madman!"