And taking a crucifix, he swore the oath.

Then they busied themselves about Lenore, revived her, soothed her, gave her of the same cordial to drink, and placed her once more in her dais-seat.  Her veil was thrown back, her wide blue eyes fixed on me in intense strain, her face and lips still blanched more bitterly beneath that hue, her features sharp as chisel-graven death.  Ah, God! must I endure that too?  Was she to hear me,—­she, not knowing why, never knowing why,—­she in whom that look of aching passion and pity was to die out and freeze and fade in one of utter scorn?

They brought me some strange draught, as if one swallowed fire.  The blood coursed richly through my shrunken veins; I felt filled with a different life.  I arose and left that bed of torture, but came back to it as to my rest.

And lying there, I betrayed Italy.

Root and branch and spray and leaf, I uprooted all my memories; I forgot no name, I lost no fact; I was eagerer than they; I modified nothing, I abbreviated nothing; the past, the future, what had been, was to be, plan and scheme and supreme purpose, I never faltered, I told the whole!

I did not look at her, I kept my eyes on the tyrant; I wished I might have the evil eye,—­but that gift was for him, the Neapolitan.  Yet at length I heard a low moan trailing toward me; I turned, and saw her face, as I saw it last, Anselmo,—­stonily quiet, frozen from indignant pain to icy apathy, and the words she would have said had hissed inarticulately through her ashen lips.  Then they brought me the confession, and, as I could, I signed it.

“Madame,” said the tyrant, “your knowledge is coextensive with his.  Does all this agree?”

“Sire, it does agree,” she answered, and they led her out.

“I have no authority over you,” said the tyrant then to me.  “You might go freely now, but that, precious as Homer, seven cities claim you, Signor!  My prisons also will now be full of rarer game.  But as a crime of your commission places you within Austrian jurisdiction, I shall take pleasure in presenting you to my cousin and surrendering you to his mercy,” and he withdrew.

“You may not be aware,” said the courteous Neapolitan, “that on the night of your arrest your frantic sword-slashes had serious result.  My friend the little Viennois fell at your hands.”

[Transcriber’s note:  Page missing in source text.]

through dazzling rings of light, and I fell forward in the cart and hung by my chains among the hoofs of the trampling horses who dragged me.  On that day I had taken my last step; I never set foot on the round earth again.  But, with all, I smiled through my groans; for the shining, solid hoofs that did their work on me did their work as well on the man who walked by my side,—­dashed dead the accursed Neapolitan.