CHAPTER I
How the good News came to Ravenna
Such were the events of that last night of carnival, and of the Ash Wednesday that followed it;—an Ash Wednesday remembered many a year afterwards in Ravenna.
The old lawyer, Fortini, standing a pace behind the Marchese Ludovico, when the latter lifted up the sheet from the face of the dead, saw only that it was the face of a woman. Paolina Foscarelli he had never seen; and Bianca Lalli he had seen only once or twice on the stage; the lawyer not being much of a frequenter of the theatre. There could be little doubt that the body lying there beneath the gateway, with the officials standing with awe-stricken faces around it, together with the six peasants who had brought it thither, was that of one or other of those two young women.
Of course there were plenty of persons at hand who were able to set at rest all doubt as to the identity of the murdered woman,—for such it was pretty clear she must be considered to be. And of course all interests in the little provincial city were for many days to come absorbed in the terrible interest belonging to the investigation of the foul deed which had been done.
But in order to set before the reader the whole of this strange story intelligibly, and to give him the same means of estimating the probabilities of the questions involved in it, and of reaching a solution of the mysterious circumstances which the authorities, who were called upon to investigate them, were in possession of, it will be expedient to go back to a period some four months previous to that memorable Ash Wednesday.
It was a bitterly cold night in Ravenna, towards the latter end of November, some four months before that Ash Wednesday on which the events that have been narrated occurred. Untravelled English people, who have heard much of "the sweet south," of the sunny skies of Italy, and of its balmy atmosphere, do not readily imagine that such cold is ever to be found in that favoured clime. But the fact is that cold several degrees below the freezing point is by no means rare in the sub-Alpine and sub-Apennine districts of northern Italy.
And Ravenna is a specially cold place. At Florence, the winter, though short, is often sharp enough; and the climate of the old Tuscan city is considered a somewhat severe one for Italy. But the district which lies to the north-eastward, on the low coast of the upper part of the stormy Adriatic, is much colder. There is nothing, neither hill nor forest, between the Friulian Alps and Ravenna, to prevent the north-eastern winds, bringing with them a Siberian temperature, from sweeping the low shelterless plain on which the ancient capital of the Exarchs is situated.
They were so sweeping that plain, and howling fiercely through the deserted streets of the old city, on the November evening in question.
Nevertheless there were several persons loitering around the door of that ancient hostelry, the "Albergo della Spada," in the Via del Monte, then as now, and for many a generation past, the principal inn of Ravenna. They were wrapped in huge cloaks, most of them with hoods to them, which gave the wearers a strange sort of monkish appearance. And they from time to time blew upon their fingers, in the intervals of using their mouths for the purpose of grumbling at the cold. But they none of them resorted to tramping up and down, or stamping with their feet, or threshing themselves with their arms, or had recourse to movement of any kind to get a little warmth into their bodies, as Englishmen may be seen to do under similar circumstances. However cold it may be an Italian never does anything of this sort. It must be supposed, that to him cold is a less detestable evil than muscular exertion of any kind.
There were some half-dozen men standing about the door; and though they were doing nothing, it was not to be supposed that they stood there in the bitter cold for their own amusement. The fact was, they were waiting for one of the great events of the day at Ravenna,—the arrival of the diligenza from Bologna. It was past six o'clock in the evening; and it could not now be long before the expected vehicle would arrive.