“I know it,” answered Bastiano, suppressing a sigh.

“It was lighted before the Virgin one the day when my sister was born, and for eighteen year it has never ceased to burn, night and day.  It was my mother’s vow.  You do not know, my dear Bastiano, you cannot know how many torturing thoughts that vow recalls to me.  My poor mother called me to her deathbed and told me a frightful tale, a horrible secret, which weighs on my soul like a cloak of lead, and of which I can only relieve myself by confiding it to a friend.  When her painful story was ended she asked to see and to embrace my sister, who was just born; then with her trembling hand, already chilled by the approach of death, she desired to light the lamp herself.  ‘Remember,’ these were her last words, ’remember, Gabriel, that your sister is vowed to the Madonna.  As long as this light shines before the blessed image of the Virgin, your sister will be in no danger.’  You can understand now why, at night, when we are crossing the gulf, my eyes are always fixed on that lamp.  I have a belief that nothing could shake, which is that on the day that light goes out my sister’s soul will have taken flight to heaven.”

“Well,” cried Bastiano in an abrupt tone that betrayed the emotion of his heart, “if you prefer to stay, I will go alone.”

“Farewell,” said Gabriel, without turning aside his eyes from the window towards which he felt himself drawn by a fascination for which he could not account.  Bastiano disappeared, and Nisida’s brother, assisted by the waves, was drawing nearer and nearer to the shore, when, at all once, he uttered a terrible cry which sounded above the noise of the tempest.

The star had just been extinguished; the lamp had been blown out.

“My sister is dead!” cried Gabriel and, leaping into the sea, he cleft the waves with the rapidity of lightning.

The storm had redoubled its intensity; long lines of lightning, rending the sides of the clouds, bathed everything in their tawny and intermittent light.  The fisherman perceived a ladder leaning against the front of his home, seized it with a convulsive hand, and in three bounds flung himself into the room.  The prince felt himself strangely moved on making his way into this pure and silent retreat.  The calm and gentle gaze of the Virgin who seemed to be protecting the rest of the sleeping girl, that perfume of innocence shed around the maidenly couch, that lamp, open-eyed amid the shadows, like a soul in prayer, had inspired the seducer with an unknown distress.  Irritated by what he called an absurd cowardice, he had extinguished the obtrusive light, and was advancing towards the bed, and addressing unspoken reproaches to himself, when Gabriel swooped upon him with a wounded tiger’s fierce gnashing of the teeth.