The Duke di Marina caught these words and glanced quickly at me, but I affected not to have heard. Inside the chapel there were a great number of people, but my own invited guests, not numbering more than twenty or thirty, were seated in the space apportioned to them near the altar, which was divided from the mere sight-seers by means of a silken rope that crossed the aisle. I exchanged greetings with most of these persons, and in return received their congratulations; then I walked with a firm deliberate step up to the high altar and there waited. The magnificent paintings on the wall round me seemed endowed with mysterious life--the grand heads of saints and martyrs were turned upon me as though they demanded--"MUST thou do this thing? Hast thou no forgiveness?"
And ever my stern answer, "Nay; if hereafter I am tortured in eternal flame for all ages, yet now--now while I live, I will be avenged!"
A bleeding Christ suspended on His cross gazed at me reproachfully with long-enduring eyes of dreadful anguish--eyes that seemed to say, "Oh, erring man, that tormentest thyself with passing passions, shall not thine own end approach speedily?--and what comfort wilt thou have in thy last hour?"
And inwardly I answered, "None! No shred of consolation can ever again be mine--no joy, save fulfilled revenge! And this I will possess though the heavens should crack and the earth split asunder! For once a woman's treachery shall meet with punishment--for once such strange uncommon justice shall be done!"
And my spirit wrapped itself again in somber meditative silence. The sunlight fell gloriously through the stained windows--blue, gold, crimson, and violet shafts of dazzling radiance glittered in lustrous flickering patterns on the snowy whiteness of the marble altar, and slowly, softly, majestically, as though an angel stepped forward, the sound of music stole on the incense-laden air. The unseen organist played a sublime voluntary of Palestrina's, and the round harmonious notes came falling gently on one another like drops from a fountain trickling on flowers.
I thought of my last wedding-day, when I had stood in this very place, full of hope, intoxicated with love and joy, when Guido Ferrari had been by my side, and had drunk in for the first time the poisoned draught of temptation from the loveliness of my wife's face and form; when I, poor fool! would us soon have thought that God could lie, as that either of these whom I adored could play me false. I drew the wedding-ring from my pocket and looked at it--it was sparklingly bright and appeared new. Yet it was old--it was the very same ring I had drawn off my wife's finger the day before; it had only been burnished afresh by a skilled jeweler, and showed no more marks of wear than if it had been bought that morning.