infernal.  Soon, however, it appears that the whole device was but a trick of Flamineo’s to test his sister.  The pistol was not loaded.  He now produces a pair which are properly charged, and proceeds in good earnest to the assassination of Vittoria.  But at this critical moment Lodovico and his masquers appear; brother and sister both die unrepentant, defiant to the end.  Vittoria’s customary pride and her familiar sneers impress her speech in these last moments with a trenchant truth to nature: 

              You my death’s-man! 

Methinks thou dost not look horrid enough,
Thou hast too good a face to be a hangman: 
If thou be, do thy office in right form;
Fall down upon thy knees, and ask forgiveness!

* * * * *

I will be waited on in death; my servant
Shall never go before me.

* * * * *

Yes, I shall welcome death
As princes do some great ambassadors: 
I’ll meet thy weapon half-way.

* * * * *

’Twas a manly blow! 
The next thou giv’st, murder some sucking infant;
And then thou wilt be famous.

So firmly has Webster wrought the character of this white devil, that we seem to see her before us as in a picture.  ’Beautiful as the leprosy, dazzling as the lightning,’ to use a phrase of her enthusiastic admirer Hazlitt, she takes her station like a lady in some portrait by Paris Bordone, with gleaming golden hair twisted into snakelike braids about her temples, with skin white as cream, bright cheeks, dark dauntless eyes, and on her bosom, where it has been chafed by jewelled chains, a flush of rose.  She is luxurious, but not so abandoned to the pleasures of the sense as to forget the purpose of her will and brain.  Crime and peril add zest to her enjoyment.  When arraigned in open court before the judgment-seat of deadly and unscrupulous foes, she conceals the consciousness of guilt, and stands erect, with fierce front, unabashed, relying on the splendour of her irresistible beauty and the subtlety of her piercing wit.  Chafing with rage, the blood mounts and adds a lustre to her cheek.  It is no flush of modesty, but of rebellious indignation.  The Cardinal, who hates her, brands her emotion with the name of shame.  She rebukes him, hurling a jibe at his own mother.  And when they point with spiteful eagerness to the jewels blazing on her breast, to the silks and satins that she rustles in, her husband lying murdered, she retorts: 

     Had I foreknown his death, as you suggest, I would have
     bespoke my mourning.

She is condemned, but not vanquished, and leaves the court with a stinging sarcasm.  They send her to a house of Convertites: 

     V.C.  A house of Convertites! what’s that?

     M.  A house of penitent whores.

     V.C.  Do the noblemen of Rome Erect it for their wives,
     that I am sent To lodge there?