“No!” Vanina replied furiously, “I wish you to know what I have done, led by the love I had for you.”
With that she told him all her proceedings from the moment that Missirilli quitted the castle of San Nicolo to surrender himself to the legate. When the recital was ended, Vanina said:
“All that is nothing; I did more for love of you.”
And she told him of her treason.
“Ah, monster!” exclaimed Pietro in a rage, hurling himself upon her, and he tried to fell her with his chains.
He would have succeeded in doing so, but for the jailor, who ran forward at his first cries. He seized Missirilli.
“Here, monster! I won’t be indebted to you for anything,” said Missirilli to Vanina, flinging the files and diamonds at her as well as his chains permitted; and he hastened away.
Vanina remained utterly crushed. She returned to Rome, and the newspapers announce that she has just married Prince Don Livio Savelli.
FOOTNOTES:
[18] “Librar l’Italia de’ barbari,” a saying of Petrarch’s in 1350, afterwards repeated by Julius II., by Machiavelli, and by Count Alfieri.