“Take that chain and brooch as a ricordo—­just for a souvenir,” said Gaetano, who then himself tore off the ornaments while the other held Faustina’s hands.

“You are a pretty girl indeed!” he cried, looking at her pale face in the light of the filthy little red lamp that hung over the low door of the wine-shop.  “I never kissed a lady in my life.”

With that he grasped her delicate chin in his foul hand and bent down, bringing his grimy face close to hers.  But this was too much.  Though Faustina had hitherto fought with all her natural strength against the ruffians, there was a reserved force, almost superhuman, in her slight frame, which was suddenly roused by the threatened outrage.  With a piercing shriek she sprang backwards and dashed herself free, sending the two blackguards reeling into the darkness.  Then, like a flash she was gone.  By chance she took the right turning and in a moment more found herself in the Via di Tordinona, just opposite the entrance of the Apollo theatre.  The torn white handbills on the wall, and the projecting shed over the doors told her where she was.

By this time the soldiers who had intercepted Gouache’s passage across the bridge, as well as the dense crowd, had disappeared, and Faustina ran like the wind along the pavement it had taken the soldier so long to traverse.  Like a flitting bird she sped over the broad space beyond and up the Borgo Nuovo, past the long low hospital, wherein the sick and dying lay in their silence, tended by the patient Sisters of Mercy, while all was in excitement without.  The young girl ran past the corner.  A Zouave was running before her towards the gate of the barrack where a sentinel stood motionless under the lamp, his gray hood drawn over his head and his rifle erect by his shoulder.

At that instant a terrific explosion rent the air, followed a moment later by the dull crash of falling fragments of masonry, and then by a long thundering, rumbling sound, dreadful to hear, which lasted several minutes, as the ruins continued to fall in, heaps upon heaps, sending immense clouds of thick dust up into the night air.  Then all was still.

The little piazza before San Spirito in Sassia was half filled with masses of stone and brickwork and crumbling mortar.  A young girl lay motionless upon her face at the corner of the hospital, her white hands stretched out towards the man who lay dead but a few feet before her, crushed under a great irregular mound of stones and rubbish.  Beneath the central heap where the barracks had stood lay the bodies of the poor Zouaves, deep buried in wreck of the main building, the greater part of which had fallen across the side street that passes between the Penitenzieri and the Serristori.  All was still for many minutes, while the soft light streamed from the high windows of the hospital and faintly illuminated some portion of the hideous scene.