I beseech you to be faithful to it; because I should despise you,
if for any woman you swerved from an object that had previously been
with you holier than heaven!"
I stood there leaning from the lofty window, and looking down over the
wide, solitary fields. Recollections crowded upon me, hopes rose before
me. One day, that yet lives in my heart, Anselmo, sprang up afresh, a
day forever domed in memory. Fair rose the sun that day, and I walked on
the nation's errands through the streets of a distant town,--a hoar and
antique place, that sheltered me safely, so slight guard was it thought
to need by our oppressors! It pleased that reverend arch-hypocrite to
take at this hour his airing. Late events had given the people courage.
It was a market-day, peasants from the country obstructed the ancient
streets, the citizens were all abroad. Not few were the maledictions
muttered over a column of French infantry that wound along as it
returned to Rome from some movement of subjection, not low the curses
showered on an officer who escorted ladies upon their drive. As I went,
I considered what a day it would have been for _emeute_, and what mortal
injury _emeute_ would have done our cause. Italy, we said, like fools,
but honest fools, must not be redeemed with blood. As if there were ever
any sacred pact, any new order of things, that was not first sealed
by blood! Therefore, when I, alone perhaps of all the throng, saw one
man--a man in whose soul I knew the iron rankled--stealing behind the
crowd, behind the monuments, and, as the coach of His Excellency rolled
luxuriously along, levelling a glittering barrel,--it was but an
instant's work to seize the advancing creatures, to hold them
rearing,--and then a deadly flash,--while the ball whistled past me,
grazed my hand, and pierced the leader's heart.
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