What! is this the gentle face that wept over the sleeping youth? Look on it! like a demon’s as she springs from her knees—defiant, fearless, no longer suppliant; degraded, but not shamed. “Beware!” she cries, as the gentlemen shun her, turning away from her—as Gennaro turns from her. “Beware, you who have shown no mercy! beware!”
CHAPTER II.
In Ferrara. No longer in the city of waters, and palaces, and gay feastings. In Ferrara, where the Borgias reign. Where the cruel Duke Alfonzo reigns, where also his cruel wife is Duchess, the terrible Lucrezia Borgia.
See, in this grand square, there is the palace of the duke. Mark his arms carved over the gateway, the awful name Borgia swelling from the stone beneath.
The new Venetian ambassador with his suite had arrived.
It is night-time, and plot and murder are awake.
Look! is not this the figure of the tall, proud-looking man who watched the Borgia from a gondola in Venice. And the man with him, ’tis he who told of Gennaro.
They are walking slowly across the square.
“So, then, he has arrived in the ambassador’s suite.”