“Julio, the hour is nigh.  Of what are you thinking?  Are you afraid?”

“Afraid?” replied Julio, with a light laugh; “why should I be afraid?”

“True, true,” murmured Simon, “since I alone shall shed his blood.”

“But,” continued Julio, “if I have no cause for personal fear, would not love for my master fill me with painful thoughts?  Signor, you are playing for dangerous stakes.”

“Who will know what has taken place here?”

“Who?  Is there not an eye above which sees all?  And whilst here, in the deepest secrecy, you immolate a human being to your thirst for vengeance, will not God hear the cry of agony of the Signor Geronimo?”

Julio saw, with a secret joy, that his words made his master tremble, although he tried to dissemble his feelings under an assumed insensibility.

“What a good joke!” replied Simon; “Pietro Mostajo talking of God!  My precautions are too well taken; when the cellar will be the depository of the secret, there will be none to tell it.”

“Do you think so, signor?  When has such a murder ever remained concealed?  It is not surprising that I bowed my head in thought.  In imagination I saw such terrible things that I dare not tell them to you.  Tears still fill my eyes at the thought.”

“What did you see?” asked Turchi, with increasing anxiety.

“What did I see?  The bailiff and his attendants.  They bound a man’s hand’s behind his back; they dragged him through the streets like an odious criminal; the people cast filth and dirt upon the prisoner, and cried out, ‘Murderer!’ What did I see?  A scaffold, and on this scaffold an executioner and one condemned to death; then a sword glittered in the sunlight, it fell, a stream of blood flowed, and a head rolled in the dust.”

The servant stopped intentionally; but his master convulsively caught his arm, and said in a hoarse voice: 

“What then?  What then?”

“And then the crowd applauded and poured out maledictions upon the name.”

“Whose name?”

“Yours, signor?”

Simon Turchi was so overpowered by the picture thus presented of his probable end, that he uttered a cry of terror and sprang back, trembling.  He cast down his eyes for a moment in silence.

Julio contemplated the signor, thus overpowered by emotion, with a derisive smile.  He had not called up this vivid scene solely as a means to induce his master to renounce his perilous enterprise; his motive was also to terrify him and to revenge himself for the violence he had been forced to endure from him.

The impression made upon Simon Turchi by this highly-wrought prediction did not last long.  He raised his head, and said, in a contemptuous manner: 

“Base hypocrite; it is your own fear which excites your imagination to see such things.  The most courageous man would become cowardly with the cowardly.  It is unfortunate for me that I need you, otherwise I would soon rid myself of your presence.  But I, at least, will not recoil from the undertaking.  Speak; tell me how far I may depend upon you.  The clock will soon strike, and there is no time for hesitation.”