Page:Manzoni - The Betrothed, 1834.djvu/408

 nor even seemed to hear him: it appeared to him, however, that some one amongst them, with his elbow, pressed his left side near his heart, where he felt a painful pricking. Trying to withdraw himself from so irksome a situation, he experienced a recurrence of the sensation. Irritated beyond measure, he stretched out his hand for his sword, and, behold, it had glided the whole length of his body, and the hilt of it was pressing him in this very place. Vainly did he endeavour to remove it, every effort only increased his agonies. Agitated and out of breath, he again cried aloud; at the sound, all those wild and hideous phantoms rushed to one side of the church, leaving the pulpit exposed to view, in which stood, with his venerable countenance, his bald head and white beard, Father Christopher. It appeared to Don Roderick that the capuchin, after having looked over the assembly, fixed his eyes upon him, with the same expression as on the well-remembered interview in his castle, and, at the same time, raised his arm, and held it suspended above his head; making an effort to arrest the blow, a cry which struggled in his throat escaped him, and he awoke. He opened his eyes; the light of day, which was already advanced, pressed upon his brain, and imparted as keen an anguish as the torch of the preceding night. Looking around on his bed and his room, he comprehended that it was a dream; the church, the crowd, the friar, all had vanished; but not so the pain in his left side. He was sensible of an agonising and rapid beating of his heart, a buzzing in his ears, an internal heat which consumed him, and a weight and weariness in his limbs greater than when he went to bed. He could not resolve to look at the spot where he felt the pain; but, finally gathering courage to do so, he beheld with horror a hideous tumour of a livid purple.

Don Roderick saw that he was lost. The fear of death took possession of him, and with it came the apprehension, stronger perhaps than the dread of death itself, of becoming the prey of the monatti, and of being thrown into the lazaretto. Endeavouring to think of some means of avoiding this terrible fate, he experienced a confusion and obscurity in his ideas which told him that the moment