CHAPTER III.

"For though he 'scaped by steel or ball, And safe through many a peril pass'd, The pitcher oft goes to the well, But the pitcher comes home broke at last."

The judges of Florence were met, and there were crowds round the gate of the Palazzo di Governo; for a criminal, sentenced to death that day, was to suffer the torture before he underwent his final doom.

Of what crime had the prisoner been guilty? He was a common robber, guilty of a hundred crimes, for any of which his life was forfeit. But there was one charge to which, guilty or not guilty, he refused to plead; and as a disclosure was important, he was to be racked to induce him to confess.

On the morning of the Vigil of St Luke it was that Lorenzo di Vasari had quitted Arezzo. His journey had been taken on the sudden, and no one had been acquainted with its object. Various circumstances in the manner of his departure led to the inference that his absence was to be a short one; and yet two months had elapsed since he had so departed, and intelligence of his course, or of his safety, his family had none.

It was strange--and men declared it so--where the Chevalier Lorenzo could be hidden. He had been traced to Florence. On that dark night, and in those deserted streets, when he felt most sure no eye beheld him, he had nevertheless been seen, mounted on his black horse, and followed by his servant, first passing the column of Victory in the Via di Repoli, and afterwards halting in conference upon the Ponta St Trinita.

But those who had seen the travellers as they paused upon the bridge, were themselves night prowlers, digging after hidden spoil in the Jews' Quarter, and they had not watched them, for they had business of their own, more urgent, to attend to. It was recollected that they had at length ridden off westwards, in the direction of the Porto Pisano; but with that movement all traces both of master and attendant ceased.

Now this disappearance was strange; and except that there had been foul play in some quarter, what other solution could be imagined for it? Why had the Chevalier Lorenzo first quitted Florence? It was not from fear of the plague, for he had returned in the height of it. And when was it that he had so returned--himself to disappear so strangely? when but on the very night, and almost at the very hour, that the Countess Arestino had died! The belief of all made the duty of none. Men might suffer wrong, and never know they suffered it; or they might be wronged, and yet sit down contented. But yet the Count Ubaldi, by those who knew him, was scarcely numbered as one who would so sit down; and there had been a rumour once, though it had passed away, which joined the name of the Chevalier di Vasari too closely with that of the Lady Angiolina. And had Lorenzo's true kinsman, the soldier Carlo, lived, less doubt had drawn his sword for vengeance or for explanation.

But "true Carlo" was dead--your honest men are ever so--dead in the wars of Germany and Spain. And Gonsalvo di Vasari, the last relative and next heir, seemed less curious to revenge his kinsman's death than to inherit. No man in Florence doubted Gonsalvo's courage, but still his dagger slept in its sheath. It might be he believed his cousin had taken no wrong; or it might be that--take the worst to be proved--his conscience whispered he might have juster cause of quarrel. But week after week elapsed, and even month after month; and though all concluded the absent Lorenzo to be dead, yet no certain tidings even of his death could be obtained, so that the title to his large estates remained in abeyance. The disappearance of the servant Jacopo, too, seemed more puzzling to many people than any other part of the affair. When one morning, about ten weeks after the absentees had been lost sight of, and while men were still debating whether they had been swallowed up, horses, arms, purses, and all, by some local earthquake, or translated suddenly to the skies, and there converted into constellations, as a great mob was sweeping over the piazza Santa Croce, conducting a robber, who had just been condemned, to the place of execution, a citizen, whom accident or curiosity had drawn close to the person of the culprit, suddenly exclaimed, that "he wore a cloak which had belonged to Lorenzo di Vasari!"

"Holy Virgin! will you not hear what I say?" insisted the person who thus stopped his fellow-creatures on their passage to the other world.--"Should I not know the cloak, when I made it myself?" he continued. Which was at least so far likely to be true, that the spokesman was a tailor.

"But the man is going to be hanged, and what more can you have if he had stolen fifty cloaks?" replied the superintending officer, giving the word that the cavalcade, which had halted, should again move forward.

The chief party (as one would have thought) to this dispute--that is, the prisoner who sat in the cart--remained perfectly silent; but the interruption of Nicolo Gozzi bade fair, nevertheless, to be overruled. For the culprit was no other than the famous Luigino Arionelli, or, as he was surnamed, "Luigino the Vine-dresser," who had been the terror of all Florence during the period of the plague; and a great many people had come out to see him hanged, who were not disposed to go home disappointed of the ceremony. And the provost, too, who commanded, was well disposed to get rid of the interference, if he could; for since the law had resumed its powers, despatch (in matters of justice) was rather the order of the day. The disorders which had to be regulated were many and dangerous; and the object being to get rid of such as suddenly as possible, a good many of the delays which were used to lie between the commission of crimes and their final punishment had been agreed to be dispensed with. So that, upon the whole, Signor Gozzi's remonstrances were generally treated as impertinent; and it was a moot point, whether he did not seem more likely to be personally added to the execution, than to put a stop to it; when luckily there came up a servant of the house of Di Vasari, attracted by the uproar, who identified the cloak in question, not merely as having belonged to the Chevalier Lorenzo, but as being the same which he had worn on the night of his disappearance.

This strange declaration--backed by a recollection that Gonsalvo di Vasari's interests must not be treated lightly--decided the commander of the escort in favour of delay; and the culprit, who had been observed to pay deep attention to all that passed, was reconducted to prison. When questioned, however, both casually in his way back to the jail by the officer of justice, and formally, afterwards, by Gonsalvo di Vasari himself, he maintained a determined silence. A sort of examination--if such it could be called when no answers were given--was prolonged for several hours; but no further facts were discovered; and not a word, either by persuasions or menaces, could be extorted from the prisoner. In the end, the chief judge, the Marquis Peruzzi, to whose daughter Gonsalvo di Vasari was affianced, suggested that time should be given for consideration, and that--Arionelli being retained in close confinement--all proceedings should be staid for four days. This recommendation was agreed to, not because it was the course which any one desired to take, but because it was the only course, under the circumstances, which seemed open. Arionelli was then shut up anew under close caution. Gonsalvo di Vasari and his friends betook themselves to study how they might hunt out fresh evidence; or, against the next day of examination, work upon the prisoner so that he should confess. And the gossips of Florence had enough of employment in discussing the singular providence which had at last led to the detection of the Chevalier's murderer, puzzling what could be the object of his present silence, and disputing whom his disclosures would impeach.

* * * * *

"Bring in the prisoner," said the presiding judge.

The day of examination was come, and the judges had taken their seats in the Palazzo di Governo. The Gonfaloniere, the Marquis Peruzzi, sat as president, with Gonsalvo di Vasari and the Count Arestino, both as members of the Council. Two secretaries, with writing implements before them, sat at the head of a long table placed below the president's chair; and a few ushers and inferior retainers of the Court, distinguished by their robes and wands, waited in different quarters of the apartment. But no other members of the Council than those already described were present, for the affair was one rather of individual than of general interest; and the heads of Florence were still too much engaged with private calamities and difficulty, to have any more leisure to spare than was absolutely necessary for the service or direction of the public.

"Let the prisoner be brought in!" said the Marquis Peruzzi.

One of the secretaries signed to an attendant, who rang a small hand-bell which stood upon the table.

Upon which the folding-doors at the lower end of the hall were thrown open, and a guard of soldiers, marching in, ranged themselves (a precaution temporarily adopted in that stormy period) on two sides of the chamber. The prisoner, Arionelli, came next, handcuffed and heavily ironed, followed by six or seven unpleasant but not formidable-looking persons, the servants of the executioner. The doors were then again closed and carefully fastened, as if to prevent the possibility of intrusion from without; the soldiers rested their lances, but remained in an attitude of attention; and a curtain was drawn aside by some unseen hand from a recess in the south side of the apartment, which showed the rack and its apurtenances prepared, and the machinery for the water torture.

"Luigino Arionelli!" then said the chief secretary, "do you yet repent you of your contumacy; and will you confess to this tribunal that which you know touching the fate of Lorenzo di Vasari?"

The culprit, to whom this demand was addressed, had he been forty times an outlaw, was a man of excellent presence. Of a stature sufficient to convey the impression of much bodily command and strength, yet boldly and handsomely, rather than very robustly, proportioned; the rich cavalier's dress in which he had been disguised when he was first taken, and of which he still wore the faded remains, accorded well with a deportment as high and unconstrained as that of any noble in whose presence he was standing. His countenance was pale, and something worn as with fatigue; perhaps it was with anxiety; for a dungeon, and the prospect of being hanged on quitting it, are not the best helps to any man's personal appearance. But he looked at the rack straightforward and steadily, not as with a forced defiance, but as at an object for which he was prepared, if not with which he was familiar; and when he spoke, there was neither faltering in his voice nor apprehension in his feature. "Carlo Benetti!" he said, when the chief secretary had done speaking--"nay, never bend your brow, my lord, for I have worse dangers than your displeasure to meet already. I am at the point of death, when men in most ranks are equal. Have nothing left to lose, so may make shift to bear the heaviest farther penalty you can inflict. Therefore write down--and see you blur it not--that unless upon terms, and not such terms as the rack to begin, and the gibbet to conclude with, neither you nor your masters shall have any information from me."

The Gonfaloniere turned his eye slowly on the instruments of torture. "Do you not fear," he said, "to die upon that wheel? Reflect! it is a fate to which you have not yet been sentenced; and it is one, compared with which, the death you have to suffer will be as the pleasures of paradise set against the torments of purgatory."

"When I became a robber," returned Arionelli, coolly, "I looked for some such fate. I reckoned with myself, that I could scarcely live gaily, and not die irregularly. I wished to rein a fleet horse in the field, rather than wait on one in the stable. To sing and thrum on my guitar in idleness half the night, rather than hold the plough, or ply the hatchet, in labour all day. In short, I wished to feed luxuriously--drink freely--have a brave mistress--spurn at law and honesty--in brief, my lord, become a nobleman, not having been born one; and I was content to pay something, at a long day, for the change."

The prisoner's demand was for his own life secured, and for pardon of two of his comrades, who were not yet brought to trial. The disclosures which he could make were desirable; but these were terms on which the State could not purchase them.

"Between the rope and the wheel," added Arionelli, "it is but an hour's endurance, which troubles me little."

"We will try the strength of that endurance," said the President, turning to Gonsalvo di Vasari, who slightly assented. "Executioner! do your duty. Let the prisoner strip."

The executioner and his assistants then proceeded immediately to strip the culprit naked to the waist, which they did almost in silence, and very temperately, without any show of violence or roughness; but yet the cold, ready, business-like civility of their manner--the expeditiousness with which they stripped a man for murder and agony, as they might have stripped him for the bath--chilled the heart with more sickness than a demeanour of coarseness or ferocity would have done.

The outlaw smiled bitterly; but it was a smile of confidence and impatience rather than insolence. "Gonfaloniere!" he cried, "once more beware! One moment's haste may kill your hopes for ever. Crack but a sinew--strain but a single limb--let your blind rage but do the smallest act that makes Arionelli's life not worth preserving,--not all the wealth that Florence holds shall ever buy your secret: I die, and it dies with me."

No notice was taken of this menace, except by an order to complete the necessary preparations. The criminal was bound to the rack. An attendant had brought the pot of water which stood by to wet the lips of sufferers in their extremity. And the cords were tightened, ready for the first pull, which was commonly followed by a dislocation of both the wrists and shoulders.

At this point many gave way; and it was the custom to try the resolution of culprits under it by a moment's suspense. But Arionelli uttered no word, nor gave any look, which could be construed into an appeal for mercy. His cheek was flushed--hands clenched--the lips strongly drawn in--the teeth set firm together; but in the whole countenance there was but one expression--that of defiance and disdain; and all eyes were fixed, and all ears were open, for the moment of allowance had expired; when, just as the Gonfaloniere's hand was raised to give the last sign for which the executioner waited, and the prisoner was collecting his strength to meet the impending shock, Gonsalvo di Vasari, who had watched the whole scene in silence, but with the closest attention, made a movement to interfere.

A consultation of some length ensued between the judges, or rather between the first two of them, Gonsalvo di Vasari and the President Peruzzi; for the Count Arestino, although many had been curious to think whether he would or would not be present at the process, seemed merely to have taken his seat as an ordinary member of the council, without feeling any peculiar interest in it. The discussion at the table was carried on in a low tone; but the prisoner watched its progress with an eye of keen and penetrating inquiry. Presently (as well as might be judged from his gestures) the Gonfaloniere appeared to yield to some proposal from Gonsalvo di Vasari; and the latter wrote a few words on a slip of paper, and handed them to an usher, who bowed and left the room; after which the President made some communication (which was not heard) to the Count Arestino; and Gonsalvo himself took up the examination.

"You demand, then," said Gonsalvo di Vasari, addressing Arionelli, "your own life, and a pardon for two of your associates who are in custody, as the price of the confession which you are to make relative to the disappearance of the Chevalier Lorenzo di Vasari?"

"As the price of my full answer to all your questions on that subject, as far as my knowledge goes, my lord," was the reply--"provided, in the mean time, your lordship causes these cords to be loosened, which give me pain something unnecessarily, and which another turn would have drawn too tight for the advantage of your lordship's objects, or of mine."

"And these associates, for whose lives you covenant?" continued Di Vasari, when the prisoner's request had been complied with.

"Are my friends, my lord--men of my own band. They came, indeed, after I was taken, to rescue me at the scaffold; and the least I can do now is to let our cause go together."

"And what if your obstinate silence (to repay that intended obligation) should cause them to die a death of torture, as you are like to do yourself?"

"They will be as able to endure such a fate as I am. I play for the higher stake--our lives. And if the die goes against me, we must suffer."

"And when their turn upon the rack comes," interrupted the Gonfaloniere, "then _they_ will disclose your secret."

"That they will tell you no word of it, my lord, I have the best security--they know nothing of it themselves."

"You are called," said Gonsalvo di Vasari, "Luigino Arionelli. Are you not that Luigino Arionelli who is known by the name of 'The Vine-dresser?'"

"I am known by an hundred names, and seen in an hundred shapes," returned the robber. "Ask your officers how many they have seen me in, in this last month, and in this very city? I am the Venetian monk from Palestine, who was preaching at the Cross in the Piazza dei Leoni, while the three great houses beyond the square were emptied, on the fifth day of the plague. And I was the Austrian officer who came with his long retinue to the inn of 'The Golden Flask' (the host will remember what fell out in that lodging), bringing letters and despatches to the Gonfaloniere from Cologne. I was the Genevese physician, who got good practice, and some money, by the 'infallible remedy against the plague;' and your lordships see, whatever I did for others, I had skill enough to keep clear from it myself. And it was I who ransacked half the houses in the Quartiere St Giovanni in only one night; robbing in a bull's hide, disguised with horns, when two fathers of the Order of Mercy met me, and ran away, mistaking me for the devil."

"Have you not a wife, or a mistress, who is called Aurelia la Fiore?"

"I have. Close with my proposal!" said the outlaw, who seemed excited by the conversation. "I would live, and be once more at liberty, for her sake!"

"Is she your wife, or your mistress only?"

"As chance will have it, not my wife according to the usages of our church. But she might have been. As far as affection is worth--passion, devotion--the asking in vain no prize which hand can win, or sacrifice which heart can make; as far as to have no rival--never to have had a rival--in the heart of her husband, so far she is my wife! There are women, perhaps, worse treated, and wives--the wives of princes--worse deserving."

"Was not this Aurelia the daughter of an oil-farmer near Ferrara?"

"She was. Then you have heard the tale? I stabbed the noble who thought her worth dishonouring, and would have borne her from me. Fortune had shared her stores more evenly between us than he imagined. To him she gave the wealth to purchase pleasure; to me the hand to win it. I was a vine-dresser then; and, but for that event, might have been one still."

"Does Aurelia know this secret, which you would sell to us?"

"That you shall know, my good lord, after you have bought it from me."

"Where is Aurelia now?"

"If you inherit not your kinsman's patrimony, Gonsalvo di Vasari, till you learn that, your patience, as well as your purse, shall fare the harder."

"What if she were in our power?"

The robber smiled contemptuously at the supposition.

"What if I should tell you that she is _here_--in chains and peril--and that every insolence you utter added to her danger?"

"That would be almost a false assertion, Gonsalvo di Vasari; and the mouths of your race should be clear from dishonour."

"Why, let him then see!" exclaimed Di Vasari, starting from his seat. A door opposite to the recess in which the prisoner stood was thrown open; and a female--it was Aurelia herself--bound, and guarded by Gonsalvo's servants, stood before him.

The recoil of the outlaw burst his bonds like threads; the cords that tied him seemed to fall off by witchcraft more than to be broken. But the effort was involuntary; it was followed by no movement, and indicated no purpose. For one moment the hands of the guards were upon their swords; but a single glance was enough, and showed the precaution was needless.

The shadow of that passing door, as it swung slowly to upon its muffled hinges, seemed to sweep every trace of former expression from Arionelli's countenance. Familiar with objects of danger and alarm, a moment sufficed him to perceive that the ground on which he had stood, as on a rock, was gone. One convulsive shudder ran through his frame, as the high clear voice of Aurelia pronounced, in trembling agony, the name of "Luigino!" He bowed his face, as one who abandoned further contest, and seemed to await what was to come.

"Luigino Arionelli," said Gonsalvo, coldly, and in the measured tone of conscious power, "do you yet repent you of your obstinacy; and will you make confession as to the fate of Lorenzo di Vasari?"

A pause ensued, and the robber attempted to rally his faculties; but the effort was unsuccessful. At length he spoke, but not as he had before spoken; there was a difference in the steadiness of his tone, and a still wider in the carelessness of his manner.--"You know, my lords," he said, "that the power is now yours. There was but one creature on earth for whom I could have wept or trembled, and she is in your hands. The struggle is over; I and my companions have lived like men; and I trust we shall die like men. Let my wife depart; she has done the state no wrong, and has no knowledge of that which you desire to learn. And as soon as she shall have passed the boundaries of the Florentine territory, I will confess the whole--much or little--that I can disclose of the fate of the Chevalier di Vasari."

The very deep, though repressed, anxiety with which the speaker put this proposal, seemed to imply a doubt how far it could be accepted. He was not mistaken; those who held the power, knew the tenure by which they held it, and that tenure they were not disposed to part with.

"Trifle not with the sword and with the fire, if you are wise, Arionelli!" said Gonsalvo di Vasari. "Press not too far upon the patience of this court. She whom you call your wife stands, no less than yourself, within the scope of our danger. Whatever mercy is extended to her, must be upon your full and unconditional submission; and not until all questions which may be put to you have been answered satisfactorily. Therefore I caution you once more; speak instantly, and without reserve; and press no longer on the forbearance of this tribunal; for you guess not the fate which you may draw down upon yourself if you do so."

The outlaw's passion rose in his fear's despite. "And press _me_ not too far, my lords," he exclaimed, "if _you_ are wise. For once remove the temptation of Aurelia's safety--and ten thousand times the torments you command shall never win an answer from me. Take heed, good Gonfaloniere, what you do! Ask your slaves here, if, at the foot of the gibbet, I shrank from the death which was before me. You have the power; beware you strain it not too far. I am in your chains--defenceless--helpless. Those arms are bound, whose strength, if they were free, perhaps the stoutest soldier here might find too much to cope with. But go one point only too far--To tear the hook from the fish's entrails is not to land him! You cannot kill the robber Luigino, though you kill him in extremest tortures, but you kill the secret which you want--the secret for which he dies--at the same moment."

If there be truth in threats like these, it is a truth for which no man (until they are executed) ever gets credit. He who will die, and die content, for his own vengeance, is the exception to the common rule. Arionelli was bound again to the wheel, and with cords which were stronger than before. Up to that moment his wife had never spoken. Her eyes had remained fixed upon the earth, and there were no sobs accompanied the large drops which fell from them; nor signs scarcely that she wept, beyond the convulsive heaving of her bosom. Once, when the dark attendants surrounded her lover, her lips opened to speak; but she only sank upon her knees--the lips were closed again--and one long shriek issued from them, that seemed to cleave the very roof of the palazzo. And then came the command from Gonsalvo di Vasari--not that which she dreaded, but another--cool, distinct, calculating, and delayed until the confinement of Arionelli was complete.--"Official, bind Aurelia la Fiore, and let the question by water be administered to her."

An obvious effect was perceptible upon the countenances of the soldiers in the hall when this command was uttered. The outlaw himself was bound--this time his bonds did not give way--and when he heard the words, they seemed to paralyse--to engender a doubt that he miscomprehended--rather than to alarm him. He turned his eye rapidly from his kneeling wife to the judges. Its expression was not of humility, and scarcely that even of entreaty. His appeal was not that of a culprit to the mercy of a judge, but the demand which man makes upon man--upon the common feeling of his fellows--"In the name of God!" was all that he exclaimed, "you cannot mean it?"

Nevertheless, however, the men in black surrounded Aurelia, who stood motionless, attempting neither effort nor remonstrance; and having raised her from the ground, were proceeding to cut the laces which held her bodice; for a part of the horrible system was, that all who suffered, male or female, were stripped naked before the application of the question. The soldiers, though, from their cold silence and averted looks, they evidently disliked their duty, showed no disposition to flinch from it; and a passionate flood of tears burst from the eyes of the unhappy Aurelia, as the first infamous preparations for adding degradation to the tortures which she was to endure, were completed.

The cold sweat poured in streams down Arionelli's forehead.--"In the name of Heaven," he cried, "hold but one moment! If you are men, you will not do this deed! Gonfaloniere! my Lord di Vasari! Count of Arestino! will you--as your souls may answer it--will you degrade this helpless and innocent female--and in the presence of her husband? Villains! cowards! slaves!" pursued the outlaw, violently, seeing that his words produced no cessation of the proceedings,--"have you not this frame, more noble than your own, but on which you may trample, still unbent and unbroken? Cannot you burst these sinews with a nod? Rend and destroy, with but a word, these limbs, whose force, naked as they are, and even in bonds, your pale hearts quail at? Am I not bound before you? Will not these miscreant agents delight to crush a frame to ruin, which shames, and shows their own too mean and insignificant? and yet will you--dare you--touch such a piece of Heaven's handiwork as that woman! My Lord Gonfaloniere--you have daughters--Man--if you are one--look at her! Is she more fit than they are for a deed of blood?--Di Vasari!--Gonsalvo!--Villain!--Usurer!--you are a man--young--passionate--can you look upon such a form as hers--and if she had sought your very life a thousand times--would you see it mangled, disgraced, and ruined?--Gonfaloniere!--Count Arestino!--Mercy! This wretch I waste my words on. If he can do the deed--no matter with what cause--my words must be too useless to dissuade him from it!"

"Luigino Arionelli!" said the Gonfaloniere, more mildly, "why, if this female's safety be so precious to you, do you not secure it, and answer the questions which we propose?"

"It is because----" The outlaw hesitated.--"Now, Gonfaloniere--you are a human creature--make that toad-like wretch take his base hands from her! Now she has fainted--let her not be bound! Villain! rogue! bare but one spot of her fair flesh, and you shall yet expire in tortures!--Marquis! Now thanks and blessings! Let the villains stand from her. Captain! Gentleman of honour! You wear a sword--I have seen you use it in the fight--support her--and may your own wife or sister never ask the same assistance, or lie in the same need!--All who know me--robber as I am--know that I never inflicted injury or insult on a woman. I sent back the Podesta of Trieste's daughter to her father safe, and without ransom, when the villain churl refused to pay it. Why, thanks! Aurelia! Wife! look up! Oh treat me--robber as I am--but as a man! Let me be free--only to sustain her; and command or question what you will."

"Luigino!" said the Marquis Arestino, who seemed something affected by the outlaw's passion, though reasons perhaps prevented his doing anything which might be construed into the showing him favour--"the court in mercy has granted this momentary delay; why is it that you do not use it to confess?"

"It is because--because," continued Arionelli, passionately, but not violently, "my hope is over--I have nothing to confess. It is because--as I stand in this danger--as I have a soul--I have nothing that can assist you in what you desire to know. When I was stopped and brought back to prison from my way to execution, I was ignorant even of how it arose that I was suspected of this crime. I saw your anxiety for the information which you thought I possessed; and would, if I could, have gained a promise of life for myself and my comrades before I declared the truth. You will not blame me for this effort? It was not quite base or selfish; for, win or lose, it included those who had put themselves in danger to aid in my escape. But it is over now. I give it up. The cloak which your people recognise, may or may not, for aught I know, have been taken from the Signor Lorenzo di Vasari. But it was the property--this is all I know--of a robber of my band, who died ten days before my apprehension."

The countenances of the judges darkened. "Where is this man?" asked the secretary Benetti; "how did he obtain this spoil, and is he one of those already in our power?"

"He is dead, as I have declared already," said Arionelli--"dead of the plague. I have proof of this. Send for the visitors of the Ospedale St Sulpice, and ask whether two of them did not find, fourteen days since, in the upper floor of a deserted house in the Rua Pulita, a man dead of the plague; and, in the same apartment, a garment of bull's hide, curiously fitted with a mask and horns? This last garment was mine--I named it before--and it was left there by accident. By the farther token that the directors of St Sulpice commanded the finders to burn it privately, lest its profane exhibition should scandalise the church."

"That is true, my lord," whispered the chief secretary to the Gonfaloniere; "the fact was known to us when it happened."

"The man who was found in that apartment," continued Arionelli, "was called Dominico Torelli: and he died with the cloak which you now challenge in his possession. How he obtained it I know not, for I saw little of his pursuits. We were on ill terms because at other times he had concealed his booty, instead of bringing it fairly to division. Those who follow our profession think but little about forms of burial; when he was dead, his arms and money were shared by such of his associates as were at hand. This rich mantle and the doublet that I wear fell to another's lot; but they struck my fancy, and I purchased them."

Gonsalvo di Vasari listened patiently till the outlaw had concluded, but it was with the air of a man who was not unmoved by anything that was saying.

"We are approaching the truth," said he, coldly; "but we must have it fully. Mark me, Arionelli! Your object is seen, and you deceive yourself to hope it can prevail. This dead robber, whom you would palm upon us, if ever he had existence, was your comrade, your follower. The crime for which you would make him answerable no single hand ever committed; and the spoil obtained was too large to have been so lightly disposed of, as you would persuade us, or concealed. Now listen to me. There are some in Florence know I am not used to trifle. The clue which lies in my hands now to my kinsman's fate--whether of life or death--words will not induce me to give up. Therefore be wise, and speak at once; for, by the great Heaven, there is no hope that fraud or obstinacy will avail you! If you should find resolution enough to die silent under this torture, I will try whether your wife here has strength to be equally contumacious."

The rage of the hunted wolf was in the robber's countenance. He saw his danger--saw that he was caught in his own toils. The very error of his judges (more than their mercilessness) led inevitably to his destruction.

"Gonfaloniere!" he cried, furiously--"Gonsalvo di Vasari! Hold once more! Reflect--there is a line beyond which human suffering does not pass! The meanest wretch in Florence, who cares not for his own life, holds the fate of the highest among ye at his mercy. You feel that you dare not, for fifty times your titles and possessions, commit this villany you meditate, and let me live. There are others--companions--friends--reflect on it!--who will be left behind, and whom an act like this will rouse to certain vengeance. You have no fault to charge on this helpless woman. You can gain nothing of that you seek from her. You sacrifice her to gain that which cannot be gained--for, so help me Heaven in my last hour, I have it not!--from me. Beware! for no deed like that of tyranny and baseness ever passed unpunished. Do not drive a trodden-down wretch to desperation! Do not rush uselessly upon an act which will stand alone in the annals of infamy and crime!--Or, tell me at least," continued Arionelli, passionately, "if there is indeed no hope--no chance--of mercy! Before you ruin your own objects, and mine, past helping--Signor di Vasari--I know whom it is I have to deal with--Definitively--what is it that you demand?"

"For the last time," said Gonsalvo di Vasari, "that this Court will deign to question--full confession as to the fate of my cousin, the Chevalier Lorenzo."

"If he be dead?"

"A token of his death, and the story of its manner."

"And though he _be_ dead, shall Aurelia then be free?"

The Gonfaloniere replied--"Of that you have our pledge."

The outlaw paused for a moment, anxiously, and in thought.--"My Lord di Vasari," he said, "I have already sworn that I had no share in your cousin's fate. I believe that he has fallen. But means of inquiry I have none, except by message to those who are beyond your warrant, and who knew more of Dominico Torelli's latter course than I know. Who but myself can do an errand such as this? Who else can search out those who hold life only while they are not found? And me you will not part with? There is but one resource. Aurelia knows the haunts of my band; she can seek those whose aid I need, and will be trusted by them as myself. Let me then be carried back to prison; and let her depart whither I direct; and if in twenty-four hours she return not with some intelligence, my life shall answer the event."

"Would it not be safer to reverse that arrangement?" said Gonsalvo, significantly,--"to retain Aurelia here in prison; and suffer you, Arionelli, in whom I trust more than you credit, to depart?"

A long silence followed, which was broken at last by the robber; but the tone in which he spoke, and his manner, was, for the first time, strangely contrasted with the expression of his features. "My Lord!" he said, interrupting the Gonfaloniere, "let us close this conference." (And his voice was steady, even to seeming unconcern; though his countenance was deadly pale, and his eye was livid and glassy, and his lips seemed to perform their office with an effort--as if some swelling in the throat choked up the utterance.) "The proof which Signor Gonsalvo demands may be furnished more easily than I had recollected. Two men of my band are now in your jails of Florence. One of them is named Vincentio Rastelli: he is the lesser offender--set him free. Let Aurelia and myself then be carried back to prison--only one demand _must_ be conceded--that our dungeon shall be the same. Let Rastelli have free access to me at will, and free passage to go and come, unfollowed and unwatched, wherever I shall send him. Promise that, my bond being kept--before I die--I shall see Aurelia at liberty. And before midnight to-morrow, Signor Gonsalvo shall have that put into his hands, which shall for ever set his mind at rest as to the fate--whatever it has been--of Lorenzo di Vasari."

* * * * *

It was the hour of midnight on the morrow; and Gonsalvo di Vasari sat in his library alone; and he rejoiced in the fortune of his arrangements. The robber Rastelli had been set at liberty. He had visited Arionelli in his prison. He had gone upon one mission, and had returned as unsuccessful; but at once again he had sped forth upon another. Was it possible that the outlaw might yet fail? Scarcely so! for Aurelia's sake, his strength would be put forth to the utmost. Would the agent make sure of his own safety and escape? This was not likely, for already he had once returned; and the fidelity of such people, generally, to their friends and leaders, was as well known as their enterprise and ferocity.

It was not likely either that Arionelli would have taken his course, without feeling a strong reliance upon its success. A few hours then--nay, a few moments now--were to put him in possession of that evidence which would end all doubt as to his cousin's rich inheritance. For Aurelia--her safety was promised; but her liberty--this evidence obtained--might be a matter for consideration. The outlaw himself would die upon the scaffold. It was pity that so much beauty as Aurelia's should be cast away.--Meantime Gonsalvo di Vasari sat alone in his palace; and the hour of midnight was passed, and yet there was no messenger. He arose and opened the lattice--the moon shone brightly--but the streets of Florence were at rest. Was it possible that he should be trifled with! A servant was summoned. But--no!--no person had appeared.

At that instant, a man, wrapt in a dark cloak, was seen stealing across the Piazza of St Mark. His form was robust, and his step firm; it was the figure of the robber--of Rastelli. He paused a moment under the shadow of the church of St Benedick, as if to watch if any one observed him; then crossed the square--the portico concealed him;--but it was the hour--the very moment--it must be the messenger!

There was a hasty tap at the door of the cabinet----

"My lord--he has come."

"Admit him."

"He did not stay."

"Where is his message?"

"My lord, it is here."

The servant placed a small iron casket in the hands of his master; a folded packet accompanied it; and retired.

Gonsalvo broke the seal of the packet. There was not a word--the paper was blank. But it contained a small key, apparently that of the casket, of a singular form and workmanship.

The letter was a blank! The chest then, which was in his hands, contained the secret? Gonsalvo hesitated. Was it fit that the deposit should be at once opened? Was it not more fit that the disclosure (whatever it was) should be public--in the presence of the Gonfaloniere, and in the apartment of the Senate?

And yet it might be that the casket contained matter hostile to his desires, rather than tending to assist them. It might be that the proof even of Lorenzo's death failed wholly; and such truth, once openly declared, could never be got rid of.

He poised the chest in his hands. It weighed heavily. What could be its contents? Perhaps the written confession of Arionelli, or some of his companions. At all events, the course of a private search was safe: a public one might be made formally, in the morning, if convenient.

He took the key, secured the door, approached the taper, and cautiously examined the lock of the casket.

The key entered freely. It turned in the lock. The bolt shot. The hand that lay upon the lid tightened its grasp to lift it open.

At that moment the magazine within exploded. The chest, with a report that shook the apartment, burst into a thousand atoms. The household of Di Vasari was alarmed. His domestics rushed in a body to their master's chamber. They tried to enter, but the door was fast. They knocked, but no answer was returned. While they stood irresolute in horror and alarm, an officer of justice, attended, came thundering at the gate. The prison of the Seralio had been alarmed in the night. The robber Arionelli and his wife were dead by poison, and the Gonfaloniere in council desired the presence and assistance of Signor di Vasari. The affrighted domestics burst the door open. The message from the State was answered by the spectacle within. On the floor lay Gonsalvo di Vasari--dead; his garments scorched; his face and hands discoloured; his body mangled with a shower of balls; and the shell of the fatal casket at his feet.