“Hush!” said Violetta.  “What dreadful fool is this I sit with?  You may have done what you think of doing already.”

She walked to the staircase door, and to that of the suite.  An honourable sentiment, conjoined to the knowledge that he had heard sufficient, induced Wilfrid to pass on into the sleeping apartment a moment or so before Violetta took this precaution.  The potent liquor of Pericles had deprived him of consecutive ideas; he sat nursing a thunder in his head, imagining it to be profound thought, till Pericles flung the door open.  Violetta and Irma had departed.  “Behold!  I have it; ze address of your rogue Barto Rizzo,” said Pericles, in the manner of one whose triumph is absolutely due to his own shrewdness.  “Are two women a match for me?  Now, my friend, you shall see.  Barto Rizzo is too clever for zis government, which cannot catch him.  I catch him, and I teach him he may touch politics—­it is not for him to touch Art.  What! to hound men to interrupt her while she sings in public places?  What next!  But I knew my Countess d’Isorella could help me, and so I sent for her to confront Irma, and dare to say she knew not Barto’s dwelling—­and why?  I will tell you a secret.  A long-flattered woman, my friend, she has had, you will think, enough of it; no! she is like avarice.  If it is worship of swine, she cannot refuse it.  Barto Rizzo worships her; so it is a deduction—­she knows his abode—­I act upon that, and I arrive at my end.  I now send him to ze devil.”

Barto Rizzo, after having evaded the polizia of the city during a three months’ steady chase, was effectually captured on the doorstep of Vittoria’s house in the Corso Francesco, by gendarmes whom Pericles had set on his track.  A day later Vittoria was stabbed at about the same hour, on the same spot.  A woman dealt the blow.  Vittoria was returning from an afternoon drive with Laura Piaveni and the children.  She saw a woman seated on the steps as beggarwomen sit, face in lap.  Anxious to shield her from the lacquey, she sent the two little ones up to her with small bits of money.  But, as the woman would not lift her head, she and Laura prepared to pass her, Laura coming last.  The blow, like all such unexpected incidents, had the effect of lightning on those present; the woman might have escaped, but after she had struck she sat down impassive as a cat by the hearth, with a round-eyed stare.

The news that Vittoria had been assassinated traversed the city.  Carlo was in Turin, Merthyr in Rome.  Pericles was one of the first who reached the house; he was coming out when Wilfrid and the Duchess of Graatli drove up; and he accused the Countess d’Isorella flatly of having instigated the murder.  He was frantic.  They supposed that she must have succumbed to the wound.  The duchess sent for Laura.  There was a press of carriages and soft-humming people in the street; many women and men sobbing.  Wilfrid had to wait an hour for the duchess, who brought comfort when she came.  Her first words were reassuring.  “Ah!” she said, “did I not do well to make you drive here with me instead of with Lena?  Those eyes of yours would be unpardonable to her.  Yes, indeed; though a corpse were lying in this house; but Countess Alessandra is safe.  I have seen her.  I have held her hand.”