The one thing most vivid in my mind was the terrible look of blank despair in the glazed eyes.
I have never forgotten it.
One dusty autumn day I was wandering in quaint, old-world Genoa, that city which the bright-eyed, laughing Ligurians love to call “La Superba.” It was in festá, and all the ladder-like streets were ablaze with flags, and the many-coloured façades of the old sea-palaces glowed in the fervid noon-heat reflected by the sapphire water. It was the hour of the siesta. The blazing sun beat down mercilessly upon the white streets; the shops were closed, and behind green jalousies the Genoese were taking their noon-day rest.
Pétroff was with me. Together we walked on the shady side of the deserted Via Roma, and having crossed the Piazza ’Nunziata, were passing the Palazzo di Giustizia, when a knot of persons talking excitedly attracted our attention.
A conversation we overheard between two soldiers aroused our curiosity as to a case in progress in the Criminal Court, and glad to seek shelter from the heat, we entered. As the soldier opened the swing-door of the cool, dimly lit court, I slipped inside with my companion. The judge had risen, and was standing solemn and statuesque. Above him hung a great gilt crucifix. He was uttering words in Italian, that caused a sensation it was impossible to mistake.
“Prisoner Lorenzo Bertini,” he said, addressing the wild-eyed looking man who stood in fetters before him, “in this Court of Justice of His Majesty the King you have been found guilty of wilfully murdering your wife Ninetta, at Nervi. I therefore condemn you to death, and in the name of the Almighty I call upon you to repent!”
I held my breath, and fixed my gaze upon the unhappy man.
In a few seconds I had sufficiently recovered to inquire of a young priest who stood beside me the nature of the tragedy. The condemned man, he told me, had confessed that the motive of his crime was jealousy. He was intoxicated, and having discovered his wife kissing a stranger who had visited her in his absence, he had entered the house and deliberately stabbed her to the heart.
A sickening sensation crept over me. I pleaded that the intense heat had brought on faintness, and we retraced our steps to our hotel. That evening we left Genoa, and a fortnight later I read in the Secolo that Lorenzo Bertini had paid the penalty of his crime.