is crime
and paralysed by the sense of his guilt, went out alone to meet him
on the public place. The semi-failure of their scheme had terrified
the conspirators: the horrors of that night of blood unnerved them.
All had fled except the next victim of the feud. Putting his sword
to the youth's throat, Gianpaolo looked into his eyes and said, 'Art
thou here, Grifonetto? Go with God's peace: I will not slay thee,
nor plunge my hand in my own blood, as thou hast done in thine.'
Then he turned and left the lad to be hacked in pieces by his guard.
The untranslatable words which Matarazzo uses to describe his death
are touching from the strong impression they convey of Grifonetto's
goodliness: 'Qui ebbe sua signoria sopra sua nobile persona tante
ferite che suoi membra leggiadre stese in terra.'[4] None but Greeks
felt the charm of personal beauty thus. But while Grifonetto was
breathing out his life upon the pavement of the piazza, his mother
Atalanta and his wife Zenobia came to greet him through the
awe-struck city. As they approached, all men fell aside and slunk
away before their grief. None would seem to have had a share in
Grifonetto's murder. Then Atalanta knelt by her dying son, and
ceased from wailing, and prayed and exhorted him to pardon those who
had caused his death. It appears that Grifonetto was too weak to
speak, but that he made a signal of assent, and received his
mother's blessing at the last: 'E allora porse el nobil giovenetto
la dextra mano a la sua giovenile matre strengendo de sua matre la
bianca mano; e poi incontinente spiro l' anima dal formoso corpo, e
passo cum infinite benedizioni de sua matre in cambio de la
maledictione che prima li aveva date.'[5] Here again the style of
Matarazzo, tender and full of tears, conveys the keenest sense of
the pathos of beauty and of youth in death and sorrow. He has
forgotten _el gran tradimento_. He only remembers how comely
Grifonetto was, how noble, how frank and spirited, how strong in
war, how sprightly in his pleasures and his loves. And he sees the
still young mother, delicate and nobly born, leaning over the
athletic body of her bleeding son. This scene, which is perhaps a
genuine instance of what we may call the neo-Hellenism of the
Renaissance, finds its parallel in the 'Phoenissae' of Euripides.
Jocasta and Antigone have gone forth to the battlefield and found
the brothers Polynices and Eteocles drenched in blood:--

From his