“Emilia Alessandra Belloni!  Vittoria!  Countess Alessandra Ammiani! pity me.  Hear this:—­I hated you as the devil is hated.  Yesterday I woke up in prison to hear that I must adore you.  God of all the pits of punishment! was there ever one like this?  I had to change heads.”

It was the language of a distorted mind, and lamentable to hear when a sob shattered his voice.

“Am I mad?” he asked piteously, clasping his temples.

“You are as we are, if you weep,” said Vittoria, to sooth him.

“Then I have been mad!” he cried, starting.  “I knew you a wicked virgin—­signora contessa, confess to me, marriage has changed you.  Has it not changed you?  In the name of the Father of the Saints, help me out of it:—­my brain reels backwards.  You were false, but marriage—­It acts in this way with you women; yes, that we know—­you were married, and you said, ‘Now let us be faithful.’  Did you not say that?  I am forgiving, though none think it.  You have only to confess.  If you will not,—­oh!” He smote his face, groaning.

Carlo spoke a stern word in an undertone; counselling him to be gone.

“If you will not—­what was she to do?” Barto cut the question to interrogate his strayed wits.  “Look at me, Countess Alessandra.  I was in the prison.  I heard that my Rosellina had a tight heart.  She cried for her master, poor heathen, and I sprang out of the walls to her.  There—­there—­she lay like a breathing board; a woman with a body like a coffin half alive; not an eye to show; nothing but a body and a whisper.  She perished righteously, for she disobeyed.  She acted without my orders:  she dared to think!  She will be damned, for she would have vengeance before she went.  She glorified you over me—­over Barto Rizzo.  Oh! she shocked my soul.  But she is dead, and I am her slave.  Every word was of you.  Take another head, Barto Rizzo your old one was mad:  she said that to my soul.  She died blessing you above me.  I saw the last bit of life go up from her mouth blessing you.  It’s heard by this time in heaven, and it’s written.  Then I have had two years of madness.  If she is right, I was wrong; I was a devil of hell.  I know there’s an eye given to dying creatures, and she looked with it, and she said, the soul of Rinaldo Guidascarpi, her angel, was glorifying you; and she thanked the sticking of her heart, when she tried to stab you, poor fool!”

Carlo interrupted:  “Now go; you have said enough.”

“No, let him speak,” said Vittoria.  She supposed that Barto was going to say that he had not given the order for her assassination.  “You do not wish me dead, signore?”