Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 3).djvu/143

 sciousness. The people where he lodged, being frightened, called in Italian leeches, who, true to their school, drew blood from the body that needed all its strength, and then did little else. Without them his constitution might have done battle with the disease and conquered it, but, bled to utter weakness, he had no force left in him to resist the destroying power of that fatal and insidious venom.

By the part he had taken in the detection and accusation of Donna Aloysia's husband, the city had learned his name and his place in art and fame; but wiser science was too late summoned: he died on the fifth night, before even his own people could come to him from over the mountains.

His window was open to the wide waters, to the bulrush-thickets, to the slow-gliding Mincio that had given him his death: at this last hour, some sense returned to him, and he strove in agony to speak, gasping for breath the while.

But the utter blank of death soon came upon him, and he perished miserably, with only hirelings and strangers about him, as the midnight hours were tolled from the