Page:Vorse--The ninth man.djvu/68



OW together with many others I turned myself to the church, to try there to find some comfort; and on the next Sunday I and all our household were at mass, and in his insolence Count Bartolommeo had asked Mazzaleone to attend with us, for, like a man who cannot leave a wound alone, but must for ever be picking at it, he seemed to find a perverse pleasure in throwing my lady and our town's conqueror together and watching the joy she had with him. Shy she was with Mazzaleone, and sweetly bold also, as though she had gone back to the days of her little childhood when she had played with the lean man, Egidio.

Small comfort was mass to me this day, and small comfort the preaching afterward, for there was in it the fear of hell—as though it were not already burned into the heart of each one of us!

"One-ninth of you are to die!" was echoed to us like a tolling bell; more sure than the pestilence, more sure than war. One-ninth of this wicked city was to die, was the comfort that the priest gave us. It was as