When the dawn forelightened, like the ghost of a buried day risen from the grave to see its past deeds, she was not yet dead.  She had once read how the murderers of Vittoria Accoramboni had been torn with red-hot pincers and otherwise grievously tortured, and how knives had been thrust deep into their breasts just where the heart was not, but near it, and how they had died hard, for they had lived more than half an hour with the knives in them, and at the last had been quartered alive.  She had not believed what she had read, but now she knew that it was true.  She envied them the searing, the tearing, and the knives which had at last killed them, though they had died so hard.

The wan dawn turned the dead man’s face from waxen yellow to stone grey.  The servants saw it, whispered, and closed the inner shutters, and the yellow candle-light shone again in the room.  Any light is better than daylight on a dead face.

Matilde sat still, bowed and covered.  Fixed in the world of grief, the hours of sorrow passed her by.  There was neither night nor day in the dead watch of the closed room, under the tall candles, burning steadily.

Then, at last, other feet were on the threshold, stumbling, shuffling, ill-shod feet of men bearing a burden.  In that city, one may not lie in his home more than one day after he is dead.  They set down what they bore, beside the couch, and waited, and the woman saw their questioning faces and heard them whispering.  Then one of them, with some reverence and gentleness, thrust his arm under the low pillow, and with his eyes bade another lift the feet.  But Matilde rose then and came between them and the dead.  They thought that she would look at him once more, and they drew back, while she looked, for she bent over his face.  But the shawl about her head fell about her, and they could not see that she kissed him.  They waited.

The great woman put her hands about him, and bowed herself, and lifted him from the couch, and the men could not believe it when they saw her turn with him and lay him down in his coffin, alone, with no one to help her.

For she was very strong.  She stood and looked down at him a long time, and once she stopped and moved one of his crossed hands, which touched the edge.  And then she drew from her neck, from beneath the shawl, a piece of fine black lace, and laid it gently over and about his head.

“Cover it,” she said to the men, and she stood waiting, lest they should touch him with their hands.

She had seen his face for the last time, and when they had covered him, they laid the coffin in another of lead which they had brought, and she stood quite still, watching the gleaming melted stuff that ran along the edges of the grey lead, like quicksilver, under the hot tool of copper.  When that was done, with main strength they laid him in the third, which was covered with black velvet.  And there were screws.