Mezzoni the Brigand — page 107: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

MEZZONI THE BRIGAND. 99 The Count Amadeo was dead! It was the last flicker of the lamp of life. Cour- teous and tender to the very last, the husband had parted with the companion of his bosom, as he had always done, gently and uncomplainingly. ‘*Good-night!’’ The history of Lucrezia Borgia is no myth in Ital- ian story, and the subtle poisons used in her day are by no means unknown in our own times. The Signora Amadeo had poisoned the confiding old count, not by one fatal dose, but by piecemeal, little by little, sapping his life away and leaving no trace. She put her ear to his heart, which had ever beat so loyally for her, forgiving her misdeeds and ministering to her pleasure, and listened. She looked up pale but firm. It beat no more. ‘Free at last!’’ she said. A few hours of hypocrisy on her part, a few con- ventional ceremonies, and the body lay in its final resting-place, the silent tomb. The widow of Count Amadeo had punctiliously complied with all that propriety demanded of her, and noone had a reproach to utter, so far as her name was concerned. She was even envied by the fashionable Neapolitan world, though they might not give utterance to such thoughts. Was she not young, beautiful, and very rich. On her part she eared very little what the gossips said of her, she was as much consumed with an inward passion as the count had been by that more tangible but scarcely less fatal poison. What a sacrifice she had made to the god of her - mad idolatry! She asked herself what she should do next? All -. c€omicbooks.com —