The marchesa’s carriage passes through Corellia at a foot’s pace.  The driver has no choice.  It is most difficult to drive at all—­the street is so narrow, and the door-steps of the houses jut out so into the narrow space.  The horses, too, hired at Lucca, twenty miles away, are tired, poor beasts, and reeking with the heat.  They can hardly keep their feet upon the rugged, slippery stones that pave the dirty alley.  As the marchesa passes slowly by, wan-faced women—­colored handkerchiefs gathered in folds upon their heads, knitting or spinning flax cut from the little field without upon the mountain-side—­put down the black, curly-headed urchins that cling to their laps—­rise from where they are resting on the door-step, and salute the marchesa with an awe-struck stare.  She, in no mood for condescension, answers them with a frown.  Why have these wan-faced mothers, with scarcely bread to eat, children between their knees?  Why has God given her none?  Again the impious thought rises within her which tempted her when standing before the marriage-bed in the nuptial chamber.  “God is my enemy.”  “He has smitten me with a curse.”  “Why have I no child?” “No child, nothing but her”—­and she flashes a savage glance at Enrica, who has sunk backward, covering her tear-stained face with a black veil, to avoid the peering eyes of the Corellia townsfolk—­“nothing but her.  Born to disgrace me.  Would she were dead!  Then all would end, and I should go down—­the last Guinigi—­to an honored grave.”

The sick, too, are sitting at the doorways as the marchesa passes by.  The mark of fever is on many an ashy cheek.  These sick have been carried from their beds to breathe such air as evening brings.  Air!  There is no air from heaven in these foul streets.  No sweet breath circulates; no summer scents of grasses and flowers reach the lonely town hung up so high.  The summer sun scorches.  The icy winds of winter, sweeping down from Alpine ridges, whistle round the walls.  Within are chilly, desolate hearths, on which no fire is kindled.  These sick, as the carriage passes, turn their weary eyes, and lift up their wasted hands in mute salutations to that dreaded mistress who is lord of all—­the great marchesa.  Will they not lie in the marchesa’s ground when their hour comes?  Alas! how soon—­their weakness tells them very soon!  Will they not be carried in an open bier up those long flights of steps—­all hers—­cut in the rocky sides of overlapping rocks, to the cemetery, darkly shaded by waving cypresses?  The ground is hers, the rocks, the steps, the stones, the very flowers that brown, skinny hands will sprinkle on their bier—­all hers.  From birth to bridal, and the marriage-bed (so fruitful to the poor), from bridal to death, all hers.  The land they live on, and the graves they fill, all—­but a shadow of her greatness!