As the Count Carriale was whispering some tender words in the ear of his beautiful mistress, the horses attached to their carriage took fright, and they ran at full speed through the crowded streets, putting to flight the gay masqueraders and their motley equipages wherever they appeared. At length, in turning a sharp corner, the vehicle was overset, and the lady and the Count thrown with considerable violence to the pavement. The former, fortunately, was unhurt; but a captain of the papal horseguards, who had dismounted to render his assistance, perceived with dismay that a stream of blood flowed from the head of the wounded Count. The compassionate old soldier endeavored to remove the mask of the sufferer; but the Count seemed singularly unwilling to expose his face. The mask was at length drawn off by force; and then it was that the dragoon, with a cry of surprise and indignation, recognized in the pretended Count Carriale, the lover of Antonia at Venice and at Rome, the features of Maffeo Accaioli, a formidable brigand whom he had recently encountered on the mountains. The annunciation was no sooner made than the beautiful Contessa fainted.
How pleased were all the Romans when it was announced that his holiness the Pope had, by a special exercise of his power, ordained that the condemned brigand, the formidable Accaioli should be guillotined during the carnival. How kind of him! The ladies were in ecstacies. Even the Countess Gazella was far from lamenting this ungenerous precipitation, for a woman once duped never forgives her deceiver; and as she had already commenced an intimacy with the Baron Von Konigsmarke, she adopted the opinion of the old song:—
“’Tis well to be off with the old love
Before you are on with the new.”
A vast crowd assembled to witness the dying agonies of the brigand. He was escorted to the scaffold by the papal dragoons, and a long file of penitents in their robes of sackcloth, bound at the waist with cords, their gloomy eyes peering through holes cut for the purpose in their cowls. These pious monks begged alms of all good Catholics to aid their endeavors in getting the soul of the condemned through purgatory. The prisoner entered on the scaffold, attended by his confessor. He kissed the cross, he received the last consolations of religion, he looked firmly on the multitude, and lay down to die—the axe descended, and it was all over.
His eminence, the Cardinal Riario, sat in secret consultation with the confessor of the dying brigand. He held a miniature in his hand.
“Yes,” he cried, “these are the lovely features of Rosa Vanelli—Rosa, whom I deceived and abandoned to despair.”
“The Cardinal’s hat and the scarlet robe cover a multitude of sins,” replied the penitent, sneeringly.