If there be truth in threats like these, it is a truth for which no man (until they are executed) ever gets credit. He who will die, and die content, for his own vengeance, is the exception to the common rule. Arionelli was bound again to the wheel, and with cords which were stronger than before. Up to that moment his wife had never spoken. Her eyes had remained fixed upon the earth, and there were no sobs accompanied the large drops which fell from them; nor signs scarcely that she wept, beyond the convulsive heaving of her bosom. Once, when the dark attendants surrounded her lover, her lips opened to speak; but she only sank upon her knees—the lips were closed again—and one long shriek issued from them, that seemed to cleave the very roof of the palazzo. And then came the command from Gonsalvo di Vasari—not that which she dreaded, but another—cool, distinct, calculating, and delayed until the confinement of Arionelli was complete.—“Official, bind Aurelia la Fiore, and let the question by water be administered to her.”
An obvious effect was perceptible upon the countenances of the soldiers in the hall when this command was uttered. The outlaw himself was bound—this time his bonds did not give way—and when he heard the words, they seemed to paralyse—to engender a doubt that he miscomprehended—rather than to alarm him. He turned his eye rapidly from his kneeling wife to the judges. Its expression was not of humility, and scarcely that even of entreaty. His appeal was not that of a culprit to the mercy of a judge, but the demand which man makes upon man—upon the common feeling of his fellows—“In the name of God!” was all that he exclaimed, “you cannot mean it?”
Nevertheless, however, the men in black surrounded Aurelia, who stood motionless, attempting neither effort nor remonstrance; and having raised her from the ground, were proceeding to cut the laces which held her bodice; for a part of the horrible system was, that all who suffered, male or female, were stripped naked before the application of the question. The soldiers, though, from their cold silence and averted looks, they evidently disliked their duty, showed no disposition to flinch from it; and a passionate flood of tears burst from the eyes of the unhappy Aurelia, as the first infamous preparations for adding degradation to the tortures which she was to endure, were completed.
The cold sweat poured in streams down Arionelli’s forehead.—“In the name of Heaven,” he cried, “hold but one moment! If you are men, you will not do this deed! Gonfalonière! my Lord di Vasari! Count of Arestino! will you—as your souls may answer it—will you degrade this helpless and innocent female—and in the presence of her husband? Villains! cowards! slaves!” pursued the outlaw, violently, seeing that his words produced no cessation of the proceedings,—“have you not this frame, more noble than your own, but on which you may trample, still unbent and unbroken? Cannot you burst these sinews with a nod? Rend and destroy, with but a word, these limbs, whose force, naked as they are, and even in bonds, your pale hearts quail at? Am I not bound before you? Will not these miscreant agents delight to crush a frame to ruin, which shames, and shows their own too mean and insignificant? and yet will you—dare you—touch such a piece of Heaven’s handiwork as that woman! My Lord Gonfalonière—you have daughters—Man—if you are one—look at her! Is she more fit than they are for a deed of blood?—Di Vasari!—Gonsalvo!—Villain!—Usurer!—you are a man—young—passionate—can you look upon such a form as hers—and if she had sought your very life a thousand times—would you see it mangled, disgraced, and ruined?—Gonfalonière!—Count Arestino!—Mercy! This wretch I waste my words on. If he can do the deed—no matter with what cause—my words must be too useless to dissuade him from it!”
“Luigino Arionelli!” said the Gonfalonière, more mildly, “why, if this female’s safety be so precious to you, do you not secure it, and answer the questions which we propose?”
“It is because——” The outlaw hesitated.—“Now, Gonfalonière—you are a human creature—make that toad-like wretch take his base hands from her! Now she has fainted—let her not be bound! Villain! rogue! bare but one spot of her fair flesh, and you shall yet expire in tortures!—Marquis! Now thanks and blessings! Let the villains stand from her. Captain! Gentleman of honour! You wear a sword—I have seen you use it in the fight—support her—and may your own wife or sister never ask the same assistance, or lie in the same need!—All who know me—robber as I am—know that I never inflicted injury or insult on a woman. I sent back the Podesta of Trieste’s daughter to her father safe, and without ransom, when the villain churl refused to pay it. Why, thanks! Aurelia! Wife! look up! Oh treat me—robber as I am—but as a man! Let me be free—only to sustain her; and command or question what you will.”
“Luigino!” said the Marquis Arestino, who seemed something affected by the outlaw’s passion, though reasons perhaps prevented his doing anything which might be construed into the showing him favour—“the court in mercy has granted this momentary delay; why is it that you do not use it to confess?”
“It is because—because,” continued Arionelli, passionately, but not violently, “my hope is over—I have nothing to confess. It is because—as I stand in this danger—as I have a soul—I have nothing that can assist you in what you desire to know. When I was stopped and brought back to prison from my way to execution, I was ignorant even of how it arose that I was suspected of this crime. I saw your anxiety for the information which you thought I possessed; and would, if I could, have gained a promise of life for myself and my comrades before I declared the truth. You will not blame me for this effort? It was not quite base or selfish; for, win or lose, it included those who had put themselves in danger to aid in my escape. But it is over now. I give it up. The cloak which your people recognise, may or may not, for aught I know, have been taken from the Signor Lorenzo di Vasari. But it was the property—this is all I know—of a robber of my band, who died ten days before my apprehension.”
The countenances of the judges darkened. “Where is this man?” asked the secretary Benetti; “how did he obtain this spoil, and is he one of those already in our power?”
“He is dead, as I have declared already,” said Arionelli—“dead of the plague. I have proof of this. Send for the visitors of the Ospedale St Sulpice, and ask whether two of them did not find, fourteen days since, in the upper floor of a deserted house in the Rua Pulita, a man dead of the plague; and, in the same apartment, a garment of bull’s hide, curiously fitted with a mask and horns? This last garment was mine—I named it before—and it was left there by accident. By the farther token that the directors of St Sulpice commanded the finders to burn it privately, lest its profane exhibition should scandalise the church.”