Gabriel saw his last day dawn, serenely and calmly.  His sleep had been deep; he awoke full of unknown joy; a cheerful ray of sunlight, falling through the loophole, wavered over the fine golden straw in his cell; an autumn breeze playing around him, brought an agreeable coolness to his brow, and stirred in his long hair.  The gaoler, who while he had had him in his charge had always behaved humanely, struck by his happy looks, hesitated to announce the priest’s visit, in fear of calling the poor prisoner from his dream.  Gabriel received the news with pleasure; he conversed for two hours with the good priest, and shed sweet tears on receiving the last absolution.  The priest left the prison with tears in his eyes, declaring aloud that he had never in his life met with a more beautiful, pure, resigned, and courageous spirit.

The fisherman was still under the influence of this consoling emotion when his sister entered.  Since the day when she had been carried, fainting, from the room where her brother had just been arrested, the poor girl, sheltered under the roof of an aunt, and accusing herself of all the evil that had befallen, had done nothing but weep at the feet of her holy protectress.  Bowed by grief like a young lily before the storm, she would spend whole hours, pale, motionless, detached from earthly things, her tears flowing silently upon her beautiful clasped hands.  When the moment came to go and embrace her brother for the last time, Nisida arose with the courage of a saint.  She wiped away the traces of her tears, smoothed her beautiful black hair, and put on her best white dress.  Poor child, she tried to hide her grief by an angelic deception.  She had the strength to smile!  At the sight of her alarming pallor Gabriel felt his heart wrung, a cloud passed over his eyes; he would have run to meet her, but, held back by the chain which fettered him to a pillar of his prison, stepped back sharply and stumbled.  Nisida flew to her brother and upheld him in her arms.  The young girl had understood him; she assured him that she was well.  Fearing to remind him of his terrible position, she spoke volubly of all manner of things—­her aunt, the weather, the Madonna.  Then she stopped suddenly, frightened at her own words, frightened at her own silence; she fixed her burning gaze upon her brother’s brow as though to fascinate him.  Little by little animation returned to her; a faint colour tinted her hollowed cheeks, and Gabriel, deceived by the maiden’s super human efforts, thought her still beautiful, and thanked God in his heart for having spared this tender creature.  Nisida, as though she had followed her brother’s secret thoughts, came close to him, pressed his hand with an air of understanding, and murmured low in his ear, “Fortunately our father has been away for two days; he sent me word that he would be detained in town.  For us, it is different; we are young, we have courage!”

The poor young girl was trembling like a leaf.