ed the woman about the neck
with both hands, and, lifting her out of her saddle, flung her across
his crupper and held her there, squeezing at her throat. For what seemed
to me an age, I and those near me stared at Vittoria's face, all red and
swollen with the choked blood, made horrid with the starting eyes, its
beauty ruined by the grasp of those two strangling hands. Simone was a
madman at the moment, with a madman's single thought, to kill his
victim, his fingers tightening and his blood-stained face twisted into a
hideous grin. Before the ghastly sight men stood still, and knew not
what to do--all but one man.

Griffo's sword rose in the air, shining like fire in the sunlight;
Griffo's sword fell like a falling star for swiftness, and struck Simone
between the head and the shoulder, slicing into the flesh as a knife
slices into an apple. It was a well-nigh headless trunk that rolled from
the saddle fountaining its blood. As the dead giant fell, Griffo let his
sword drop clanging on the stones and caught hold of Vittoria, and,
wrenching her from the relaxing fingers, clasped her senseless body in
his arms.

In the fury of confusion that followed--the screaming and plunging of
startled horses, the shouts and oaths and cries of men that seemed to
themselves to have kept silence for a great while, and, finding voice as
last, must needs use it inarticulately, like savages--I remember best
how I saw Dante standing erect on the palace steps, with his sword held
high above him, and his face was set and stern as the face of some
herald of the wrath of Heaven.

"The judgment of God!" he shouted, in a voice so loud that I heard it
above all the din, and many others heard it too, "the judgment of God!
the judgment of God!"

XXVII

THE SOLITARY CITY

With the death of Simone the immediate brawl came to an end. In the
first fury after his fall certain of his followers began to cry for
vengeance, but the cry was not caught up with any fulness of assurance,
and soon faded into silence. The men of the Yellows, so suddenly made
leaderless and faced by enemies so many and determined, could not fuse
into concerted action. They hesitated, looked foolishly at one another,
and lost whatever chance they had of success. Messer Simone's body,
almost decapitated from the stroke of Griffo, was fished up from
underneath the hooves of his rearing charger, laid upon a dismounted
door, covered with a cloak, and hurriedly conveyed