Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 3).djvu/142

 hands of justice, and conveyed to the prisons of the city, the task of Maurice Sanctis was over, the gift that he would give to Este was complete. Greater gift than this of freedom can no man give to another.

'I myself will tell him,' he thought, on the eve of that memorable day when the people of Mantua gathered about the marble tomb of Donna Aloysia, and talked in the narrow contrade of the city of this strange tragedy which had come in fresh guise to their mouths to help them pass the long, hot, empty hours.

But that night Mantua, as though jealous that a stranger from beyond the snowy mountains on the Lombard frontier should have come there to seize its secrets from out of its dark old palaces, that have seen so many crimes and kept so many mysteries untold, Mantua, as though angered against him, poured into his throat the poison of her subtle vapours, of her fever mists, that lurk for ever amidst her long fields of reeds and her pale-gleaming water-meadows.

That night he fell ill.

With morning he had almost lost con-