So the days flew by in doubt and sore distress for Elena.  Then on the night before her wedding, she felt that she could bear this life no longer.  But having no poison, and being afraid to pierce her bosom with a knife, she lay down on her bed alone, and tried to die by holding in her breath.  A mortal swoon came over her; her senses fled; the life in her remained suspended.  And when her nurse came next morning to call her, she found poor Elena cold as a corpse.  Messer Pietro and all the household rushed, at the nurse’s cries, into the room, and they all saw Elena stretched dead upon her bed undressed.  Physicians were called, who made theories to explain the cause of death.  But all believed that she was really dead, beyond all help of art or medicine.  Nothing remained but to carry her to church for burial instead of marriage.  Therefore, that very evening, a funeral procession was formed, which moved by torchlight up the Grand Canal, along the Riva, past the blank walls of the Arsenal, to the Campo before San Pietro in Castello.  Elena lay beneath the black felze in one gondola, with a priest beside her praying, and other boats followed bearing mourners.  Then they laid her in a marble chest outside the church, and all departed, still with torches burning, to their homes.

Now it so fell out that upon that very evening Gerardo’s galley had returned from Syria, and was anchoring within the port of Lido, which looks across to the island of Castello.  It was the gentle custom of Venice at that time that, when a ship arrived from sea, the friends of those on board at once came out to welcome them, and take and give the news.  Therefore many noble youths and other citizens were on the deck of Gerardo’s galley, making merry with him over the safe conduct of his voyage.  Of one of these he asked, ’Whose is yonder funeral procession returning from San Pietro?’ The young man made answer, ’Alas, for poor Elena, Messer Pietro’s daughter!  She should have been married this day.  But death took her, and to-night they buried her in the marble monument outside the church.’  A woeful man was Gerardo, hearing suddenly this news, and knowing what his dear wife must have suffered ere she died.  Yet he restrained himself, daring not to disclose his anguish, and waited till his friends had left the galley.  Then he called to him the captain of the oarsmen, who was his friend, and unfolded to him all the story of his love and sorrow, and said that he must go that night and see his wife once more, if even he should have to break her tomb.  The captain tried to dissuade him, but in vain.  Seeing him so obstinate, he resolved not to desert Gerardo.  The two men took one of the galley’s boats, and rowed together toward San Pietro.  It was past midnight when they reached the Campo and broke the marble sepulchre asunder.  Pushing back its lid, Gerardo descended into the grave and abandoned himself upon the body of his Elena.  One who had seen them at that moment