Then he suddenly stopped and gasped for breath. In that moment the strength of despair came to him. He straightened himself up, and a slight flush rose to his cheeks.
“Oh, signori,” said little Gandolfo, “let me speak of that of which I am always thinking! Let me speak of what I always see before me!”
And he began unopposed and with wonderful power to tell what he himself had seen.
He told how he who was son to the watchman of the town-hall had crept through dark attics and had lain hidden in one of the galleries of the court-room the night the court-martial had been held to pass sentence on the insurgents in Diamante.
Then he had seen Don Gaetano Alagona on the bench of the accused with a lot of wild fellows who were worse than brutes.
He told how beautiful Gaetano had been. He had seemed like a god to little Gandolfo beside those terrible people about him. And he described those bandits with their wild-beast faces, their coarse hair, their clumsy limbs. He said that no one could look into their eyes without a quiver of the heart.
Yet, in all his beauty, Don Gaetano was more terrible than those people. Gandolfo did not know how they dared to sit beside him on the bench. Under his frowning brows his eyes flashed at his fellow-prisoners with a look which would have killed their souls, if they like others had possessed such a thing.
“‘Who are you,’ he seemed to ask, ‘who dare to turn to plundering and murder while you call on sacred liberty? Do you know what you have done? Do you know that on account of your devices I am now a prisoner? And it was I who would have saved Sicily!’” And every glance he cast at them was a death warrant.
His eyes fell on all the things that the bandits had stolen and that were now piled up on a table. He recognized them. Could he help knowing the clocks and the silver dishes from the summer-palace? could he help knowing the relics and coins that had been stolen from his English patroness? And when he had recognized the things, he turned to his fellow-prisoners with a terrible smile. “‘You heroes! you heroes!’ said the smile; ‘you have stolen from two women!’”