The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1885-12-06

with people who could not find standing room in
the courthouse. The murmur of their rapid
and loud voices was like the noise of a sea on his
ears; They had all the same burden. They all
repeated like one man the same words: '"They
will condemn her." and then wondered what
sentence she would receive. Whether a score of
years OF seclusion, or a lifetime.
GeSualdo went tn rough the chattering, curl
Gus, cruel throng, barbarous with that barbarity
or the populace, which in all countries sees with
glee a bull die. a wrestler drop, a malefactor as
cend the scaffold or a rat scour the streets soaked
in petroleum and burning alive. The dead man
had been nothing to them, and his wife had done
nothing to harm, yet there was not a man or a
woman a youth or a girl, in the crowd who
would not have felt that he or she was defrauded
of his entertainment if she were acquitted by
her judges, although yet there was a general
sense amongst them that she had done no more
than had been natural, and no more than had
been her right.
The dark. slender, emaciated figure of the
priest gilded through the excited and bolster
Gus groups; the air had the heat of summer, the
sky above was blue and cloudless, the brown
brick walls of church and palace seemed baking
In the light of the sun. In the corner of the
square was a fountain, relic of the old times
when the town had been a place of pageantry
and power; beautiful pale green water. cold and
fresh. leaping and flowing around marble
%dolphins. Gesualdo stopped and drank thirstily.
as though he would never cease to drink, then
went on his way and pushed aside the leathern
curtain of the church door and entered into the
GOODNESS and solitude If that place of refuge.
There he stretched himself before the cross in
prayer, and wept bitter, burning. rnavailing tears
for the burden which he bore Of anothers sin
and his own helplessness beneath it, which
seemed to him like a greater crime.
But even at the very altar or his God peace
was denied him. Hurried, loud, impetuous
steps from heavy boots fell on the old, worn.
marble floor of the church, and Falko Melegari
strobe up behind him, and laid a heavy hand
upon his shoulders. The young mans face was
deeply flushed, his eyes were savage, his breath
was quick and uneven; he had no heed for the
sanctity of the place or of his companion.
"Get up and hear me-" he said, roughly.
"They all say the verdict will be against her;
you heard them"
Gesualdo made a gesture of assent.
Very we'll, then" said the steward, through
his clenched teeth, IF it be so indeed, 1 swear,
as you and | live, that l will denounce you to the
judges in her stead"
'Gesuaido did not speak. He stood in a medi-
tatlve attitude with his arms folded on his chest.
he did not express either surprise or Indignation.
II will denounce you," repeated Melegari.
made more furious by his silence. "What did
you do at night under the Grand Dukes poplars!
Why did you carry IN and screen the corpse?
ID oes not the whole village talk < of your strange
ways and your altered habits9 There is more
than enough against you to send to the galleys
a score of better men than you. Anyhow, l
will denounce you if you do not make a clean
breast of all you know to the PRESIDENT to-
morrow. You are either the assassin or the
accomplish, you accursed, black coated hypo-
| crite!"
A slight flush rose on the waxen pallor of
Gesualdo's face, but he still kept silence.
The young man, watching him with eyes OF
hatred, saw guilt in that obstinate and mulish
dumbness.
you dare not deny it, trained liar though
you be" he said, with passionate scorn. "Oh,
servitor of heaven, you would let her drag all
her years out in misery to save your own miser-
able, pulling, sexless, worthless life! Well! hear
me and understand. No one can say that 1 10
not keep my word, and here. by the cross which
hangs above us, | take my oath that if you do
Lot tell all you know tomorrow, should she be
condemned, l will denounce you to the law, and
if the law fail to do justice, l will kill you as
Tasso Tassilo was killed. May l die %childless,
penniless, and accursed if my hand fall"
Then, with no other word, he strobe from the
church, the golden afternoon sunshine streaming
through the stained windows above and falling
on his fair hair, his flushed face, his flaming
eyes, till his common humanity seemed all trans
figured. He looked like the avenging angel of
Tintorettos Paradise.
Gesualdo stood immovable in the deserted
church: his arms crossed on his breast, his head
bent. A great resolve, a mighty inspiration,
had descended on him with the furious words of
his foe. Light had come to him as from heaven
itself. He could not give up the secret which
had been confided to him in the confessional,
but ne could give up himself. His brain was
Diicu Will lcR0uuS y l. SdCEluC0 duQ mdrIyruOlu.
Why might he not become one of that holy band
of martyrs.
Nay, he was too humble to place himself be-
side them even in thought. The utmost he could
do. he knew, would be only expiration for what
seemed to him his ineffaceable sin in letting any
human affection, however harmless, unselfish,
and distant, stain the singleness and purity of
his devotion to his vows. He had been but a
peasant boy until he had taken his tender heart
and his ignorant mind to the seminary, and he
had been born with the soul of a S. Francis. of
a San Rocco, of q S. John, out of place, out of
! time in the world he lived in. and in which the
passions of faith and of sacrifice were as strong
as are the passions of lust and of selfshness in
other natures. The spiritual world was to him
a reality, and the earth, with its merciless and
greedy peoples, its plague of lusts, its suffering
hearts, its endless injustice, an unreal and
hideous dream.
rose before him as his duty appeared one which
would reconcile him at once to the Deity he had
offended and the humanity he was tempted to
betray. To his mind. enfeebled and exhausted
by long fasting of the body and denial of every
natural indulgence, such sacrifice of self seemed
an lmperlous command from heaven. He
would drag out his own life in misery and ohio
guy indeed; but what of that} Had not the great
martyrs and founders of his church endured as
much or more9 Was it not by such torture vol
unfairly accepted and endured on earth that the
grace of God was won?
He would tell a lie, indeed; he would draw
down ignominy on the name of the church; he
would make men believe that an anointed priest
was a common murderer, swayed by low and
jealous hatreds; but of this he did not think. In
the tension and perplexity of his tortured soul.
the vision of a sacrifice in which he would be
the only sufferer, in which the woman would be
saved and the secret told to him be preserved,
appeared as "a heaven-sent solution of the
doubts and difficulties in his path. Stretched in
agonized prayer before one of the side affairs of
the church, he imagined the afternoon sun
| napmS streaming thrO1Uh thn hI0h yyin2om ON
his face to be the light of a celestial world. and
in the hush and heat of the incense-scented air
he believed that he heard a voice which cried to
him, by suffering ali things areJnade pure"
He was not a wise. or strong, or educated
man. He had the heart of a poet and the mind
of a child. There was a courage in him to
which sacrifice was welcome, and there was a
credulity in him which made all exaggeration of