keep one woman true? She whom I loved--she as delicate of
form, as angel-like in face as the child-bride of Christ, St.
Agnes--she, even she was--what? A thing lower than the beasts, a thing
as vile as the vilest wretch in female form that sells herself for a
gold piece--a thing--great Heaven!--for all men to despise and make
light of--for the finger of Scorn to point out--for the foul hissing
tongue of Scandal to mock at! This creature was my wife--the mother of
my child--she had cast mud on her soul by her own free will and
choice--she had selected evil as her good--she had crowned herself with
shame willingly, nay--joyfully; she had preferred it to honor. What
should be done? I tortured myself occasionally with this question. I
stared blankly on the ground--would some demon spring from it and give
me the answer I sought? What should be done with HER--with HIM, my
treacherous friend, my smiling betrayer? Suddenly my eyes lighted on
the fallen rose-leaves--those that had dropped when Guido's embrace had
crushed the flower she wore. There they lay on the path, curled softly
at the edges like little crimson shells. I stooped and picked them
up--I placed them all in the hollow of my hand and looked at them. They
had a sweet odor--almost I kissed them--nay, nay, I could not--they had
too recently lain on the breast of an embodied Lie! Yes; she was that,
a Lie, a living, lovely, but accursed Lie! "Go and kill her" Stay!
where had I heard that? Painfully I considered, and at last
remembered--and then I thought moodily that the starved and miserable
rag-picker was more of a man than I. He had taken his revenge at once;
while I, like a fool, had let occasion slip. Yes, but not forever!
There were different ways of vengeance; one must decide the best, the
keenest way--and, above all, the way that shall inflict the longest,
the cruelest agony upon those by whom honor is wronged. True--it would
be sweet to slay sin in the act of sinning, but then--must a Romani
brand himself as a murderer in the sight of men? Not so; there were
other means--other roads, leading to the same end if the tired brain
could only plan them out. Slowly I dragged my aching limbs to the
fallen trunk of a tree and sat down, still holding the dying
rose-leaves in my clinched palm. There was a surging noise in my
ears--my mouth tasted of blood, my lips were parched and burning as
with fever. "A white-haired fisherman." That was me! The king had said
so. Mecha