Page:Maurice Hewlett--Little novels of Italy.djvu/235

Rh They worked their best to compose that pitiful dead. She had suffered much, and showed it. Her wide eyes were horrible. And there was little time for more than to order her dress and neck-jewels, and to smooth out her brown hair.

"H'm," said Cesare, "you have made little of it; but at a distance it may serve our turn until the troops arrive. Is the litter below? Good. Avanti!"

The church bells rang all night, and all night the Piazza Grande was alive, a flickering field of torches and passing and repassing throngs. "Evviva Madonna! Hail, Duchess of Nona!" were the cries they gave. And above, at an arched window, haloed by candle-light, the staring lady of the land, stiffened and relaxed, played out the last functions of her generous body, in return for the people's acclamation.

Bianca Maria, Queen of the Romans by virtue of proxy and the Sacrament, spurred into the city of Nona next noon at the head of a plumed escort. There, at the fatal window, she saw the whole truth in a flash.

"O lasso! Her third husband was her last, I see," she said, and bit her lip to sting the tears back.

"Majesty," said Cesare, hat in hand at her stirrup, "it is not quite so. Grifone was not quick enough for the other fellow. Messer Death is actually her second husband."

"Now I have something for which to thank our Lord God," said Bianca Maria. "Let her be decently buried, but not here."

It was, however, explained that for reasons of