Again the gipsey girl prayed for the stranger’s life. Again the assassin refused. At last he said quickly that if a traveller came past he would slay him in his place—the fool could not tell who might be in the sack.
Then the gipsey wept as she said there was no hope of a traveller passing while the storm raged so fiercely.
Why does she tremble and draw back from the crevice? What? shall this woman, this dancing gipsey, weep and pray for him? And shall she, Gilda, do nothing to save him? Who is this woman that she should weep for him? Will she—this gipsey—die for his sake? Yet she, Gilda, could. Again she looked, and saw the gipsey still kneeling and weeping. Then she would die for his sake. Thus her love and jealousy had lost her.
The next moment she had entered—the storm raging more fiercely than before.
Walking proudly and fearlessly through the night air, came the fool, sure that by this time his vengeance was complete—the vengeance for which he had waited an age of grief.
Forth from the hut came the bandit, dragging a heavy sack. There he lay, then—dead; there was the chinking of money over the still burden, and there the bravo had left the fool alone with the destroyer. “So then,” thought Rigoletto, “here was the great duke, lying dead at his, the poor fool’s feet.” Then he thought he should like to see the face of his enemy, before he cast him into the black waters.
Yet no, he would not like to see his face; so he began drawing away the sack, when—merciful powers!—he heard the voice of the duke singing gaily, as he moved away, saved, in the distance.
“But then whose body lay at his feet? Whose?”
With a might of horror, he tore open the mouth of the sack; and there, within it, lay—his daughter!
“My daughter! Heaven! my Gilda! Yet no, she is now on her way to Verona. Is this a dream? Oh, no! no dream. My daughter! oh, my daughter!”