o move without proofs, let him doubt such proofs as I had set
before him and deem them overslender to warrant action. Such scruples
should not serve to restrain me. I was no lukewarm brother. Here in
Pesaro I would remain until her poor body was delivered to the earth,
and then I would set out upon a last emprise. Messer Ramiro del' Orca
should account to me for this vile deed.

There in the House of Peace I sat gnawing my hands and maturing my
bloody plans whilst the night wore on. Later a still more frenzied mood
obsessed me--a burning desire to look again upon the sweet face of her I
had loved, the sainted visage of Madonna Paola. What was there to deter
me? Who was there to gainsay me?

I stood up and uttered that challenge aloud in my madness. My voice
echoed mournfully up the aisles, and the sound of the echo chilled me,
yet my purpose gathered strength.

I advanced, and after a moment's pause, with the silver-broidered hem of
the pall in my hands, I suddenly swept off that mantle of black cloth,
setting up such a gust of wind as all but quenched the tapers. I caught
up the bench on which I had been sitting, and, dragging it forward, I
mounted it and stood now with my breast on a level with the coffin-lid.
I laid hands on it and found it unfastened. Without thought or care of
how I went about the thing, I raised it and let it crash over to the
ground. It fell on the stone flags with a noise like that of thunder,
which boomed and reverberated along the gloomy vault above.

A figure, all in purest white, lay there under my eyes, the face covered
by a veil. With deepest reverence, and a prayer to her sainted soul to
forgive the desecration of my loving hands, I tremblingly drew that veil
aside. How beautiful she was in the calm peace of death! She lay there
like one gently sleeping, the faintest smile upon her lips, and as I
looked it seemed hard to believe that she was truly dead. Why, her
lips had lost nothing of their colour; they were as rosy red--or nearly
so--as ever I had seen them in life. How could this be? The lips of the
dead are wont to put on a livid hue. I stared a moment, my reverence and
grief almost effaced by the intensity of my wonder. This face, so ivory
pale, wore not the ashen aspect of one that would never wake again.
There was a warmth about that pallor. And then I caught my nether lip
in my teeth until it bled, and it is a miracle that I did not scream,
seeing how overwrought was my condit