I have been suffering too much; and then happiness so great as mine had to be paid for. Yes, my Luigi, be comforted. I have been so happy that if I had to begin life again, I would again accept our lot. I am a bad mother; I weep for you even more than for my child. — My child!” she repeated in a full, deep voice. Two tears dropped from her dying eyes, and she suddenly clasped yet closer the little body she could not warm. “Give my hair to my father in memory of his Ginevra,” she added. “Tell him that I never, never accused him—”
Her head fell back on her husband’s arm.
“No, no, you cannot die!” cried Luigi. “A doctor is coming. We have food. Your father will receive you into favor. Prosperity is dawning on us. Stay with us, angel of beauty!”
But that faithful and loving heart was growing cold. Ginevra instinctively turned her eyes on the man she adored, though she was no longer conscious of anything; confused images rose before her mind, fast losing all memories of earth. She knew that Luigi was there, for she clung more and more tightly to his ice-cold hand, as if to hold herself up above a gulf into which she feared to fall.
“You are cold, dear,” she said presently; “I will warm you.”
She tried to lay her husband’s hand over her heart, but she was dead. Two doctors, a priest, and some neighbors came in at this moment, bringing everything that was needful to save the lives of the young couple and to soothe their despair. At first these intruders made a good deal of noise, but when they were all in the room an appalling silence fell.
While this scene was taking place Bartolomeo and his wife were sitting in their old armchairs, each at one corner of the immense fireplace that warmed the great drawing-room of their mansion. The clock marked midnight. It was long since the old couple had slept well. At this moment they were silent, like two old folks in their second childhood, who look at everything and see nothing. The deserted room, to them full of memories, was feebly lighted by a single lamp fast dying out. But for the dancing flames on the hearth they would have been in total darkness. One of their friends had just left them, and the chair on which he had sat during his visit stood between the old people. Piombo had already cast more than one glance at this chair, and these glances, fraught with thoughts, followed each other like pangs of remorse, for the empty chair was Ginevra’s. Elisa Piombo watched the expressions that passed across her husband’s pale face. Though she was accustomed to guess the Corsican’s feelings from the violent changes in his features, they were tonight by turns so threatening and so sad that she failed to read this inscrutable soul.
Was Bartolomeo yielding to the overwhelming memories aroused by that chair? Was he pained at perceiving that it had been used by a stranger for the first time since his daughter’s departure? Had the hour of mercy, the hour so long and vainly hoped for, struck at last?
These reflections agitated the heart of Elisa Piombo. For a moment her husband’s face was so terrible that she quaked at having ventured on so innocent a device to give her an opportunity of speaking of Ginevra. At this instant the northerly blast flung the snowflakes against the shutters with such violence that the old people could hear their soft pelting. Ginevra’s mother bent her head to hide her tears from her husband. Suddenly a sigh broke from the old man’s heart; his wife looked at him; he was downcast. For the second time in three years she ventured to speak to him of his daughter.
“Supposing Ginevra were cold!” she exclaimed in an undertone. “Or perhaps she is hungry,” she went on. The Corsican shed a tear. “She has a child, and cannot suckle it—her milk is dried up—” the mother added vehemently, with an accent of despair.
“Let her come, oh, let her come!” cried Piombo. “Oh, my darling child, you have conquered me.”
The mother rose, as if to go to fetch her daughter. At this instant the door was flung open, and a man, whose face had lost all semblance to humanity, suddenly stood before them.
“Dead!—Our families were doomed to exterminate each other; for this is all that remains of her,” he said, laying on the table Ginevra’s long, black hair.
The two old people started, as though they had been struck by a thunderbolt; they could not see Luigi.
“He has spared us a pistol shot, for he is dead,” said Bartolomeo, deliberately, as he looked on the ground.
The Rue du Tourniquet-Saint-Jean, formerly one of the darkest and most tortuous of the streets about the Hôtel de Ville, zigzagged round the little gardens of the Paris Prefecture, and ended at the Rue Martroi, exactly at the angle of an old wall now pulled down. Here stood the turnstile to which the street owed its name; it was not removed till 1823, when the Municipality built a ballroom on the garden plot adjoining the Hôtel de Ville, for the fête given in honor of the Duc d’Angoulême on his return from Spain.
The widest part of the Rue du Tourniquet was the end opening into the Rue de la Tixeranderie, and even there it was less than six feet across. Hence in rainy weather the gutter water was soon deep at the foot of the old houses, sweeping down with it the dust and refuse deposited at the cornerstones by the residents. As the dustcarts could not pass through, the inhabitants trusted to storms to wash their always miry alley; for how could it be clean? When the summer sun shed its perpendicular rays
