Page:Matteo Bandello - twelve stories (IA cu31924102029083).pdf/369

 nor can I rightly tell why still I live. Ah! life of my life, who shall assure me that others, in this time of your absence from me, have not enjoyed your beauty? Jealousy is like to kill me, and my very heart is broken within my body. As then, O heart of mine, we may but die once, and escape this dire trouble, it is far better that we die together, and end all these our doubts at a single blow." So saying, he took a dagger from his belt, and stabbed the girl to the heart, so that she straightway fell down dead. Then he turned the bloody steel against himself, and, plunging it into his breast, sank down at Lucrezia's side.

Great was the noise of weeping in that house, and the hapless mother's desperate lamentations rent the sky. All that day Galeazzo lingered; and, when the sun went down, he died. Deaf to all comfortings, the mother passionately bewailed her dear dead son; indeed, she merited great pity and compassion, for her story might e'en draw tears from stones, to say nothing of you, gentle, tender-hearted ladies, whose beauteous eyes, as I see, are filled with tears. To keep matters hidden, the lovers were buried secretly, it being