to have been built by Augustus, seldom
resounded to any other echoes than those of the heavy wheels of the
hay- or corn-wagons coming in from the pastoral country around.

The court-house, where all great trials took place, stood in one of the
bare, silent, dusty squares of the town. It had once been the ancient
palace of the podesta, and had the machicolated walls, the turreted
towers, and the vast stairways and frescoed chambers of a larger and
statelier time than ours. The hall of justice was a vast chamber
pillared with marble, vaulted and painted, sombre and grand: it was
closely thronged with country-folks; there was a scent of hay, of
garlic, of smoking pipes hastily thrust into trouser-pockets, of
unwashed flesh steaming hotly in the crowd and the close air. The judge
was there with his officers, a Renaissance figure in black square cap
and black gown. The accused was behind the cage assigned to such
prisoners, guarded by carabineers and by the jailers. Gesualdo looked in
once from a distant door-way; then, with a noise in his ears like the
sound of the sea, and a deadly sickness on him, he stayed without in the
audience-chamber, where a breath of air came to him up one of the
staircases, there waiting until his name was called.

The trial began. Everything was the same as it had been in the
preliminary examination which had preceded her committal on the charge
of murder. The same depositions were made now that had then been made.
In the interval, the people of Marca had forgotten a good deal, so added
somewhat of their own invention to make up for the deficiency; but, on
the whole, the testimony was the same, given with that large looseness
of statement and absolute indifference to fact so characteristic of the
Italian mind, the judge, from habit, sifting the chaff from the wheat in
the evidence with unerring skill, and following with admirable patience
the tortuous windings and the hazy imagination of the peasants he
examined.

The examination of Gesualdo did not come on until the third day. These
seventy or eighty hours of suspense were terrible to him. He scarcely
broke his fast, or was conscious of what he did. The whole of the time
was passed by him listening in the court of justice or praying in the
churches. When at last he was summoned, a cold sweat bathed his face and
hair; his hands trembled; he answered the interrogations of the judge
and of the advocates almost at random; his replies seemed scarce