“And who may name her, if not I?”
“Perchance, thou didst destroy her also.”
“Ah, no! she lives.”
“She lives, she lives, and I shall never see her.”
Here the quick poison struck him so that he reeled against a high Gothic pillar to save himself from falling, and as his hands lay on his breast, he leaned his head slowly backward, and still he cried “Mother, mother, that I could die in her arms. Back, back, woman, do not touch me. Oh, mother! mother!”
“A woman, guilty, yet penitent, quailing and kneeling at the feet of him whom she has slain, who lowers her head as I do mine, and fearingly doth shut out sight by covering her eyes with both her hands, as I do, Gennaro. This woman is thy mother.”
As she spoke, he was sustaining himself against the Gothic pillar, like a brave man as he was, willing to meet death standing—rocking round the pillar from right to left, and clinging to it with weak hands.
But the last words stay him. Rigid he stands for a moment, then as she flinches away from him, yet stretching out her arms, he falls down, and to her breast.
“In my mother’s arms. At last in my mother’s arms, I die.”—And as her arms crept round him he was dead.
As he lay there, she looking on him, the doors were opened, notwithstanding her orders, and there at the head of the steps stood the duke and many ladies. No fear now had she of him, her Gennaro was dead. He might come and scorn, upbraid, insult her now. No matter, she did not care.