Volume Ii Part 14 (2/2)

The gun at the palace. The King was starting from the Quirinal. All the scattered cries and laughs and voices were wielded together into one long quavering roar of satisfaction and excitement.

There--again! and nearer at hand this second gun.

The cheers rise higher, sink deeper. He is coming, the young soldier King, the master of Italy, the popular hero. See! hats are waving, men are shouting,--the infection of enthusiasm catches and runs like fire along the line of eager, expectant faces. Here he comes. The roar lifts, swells, grows louder and louder; the military bands on either side of the piazza break with one accord into the triumphant ringing rhythm of the royal march. They have seen the troops defile before them with scarcely a sign of interest, but now, at sight of that little isolated group of riders with the plumed and glittering helmets, there comes one mad instant of frantic acclamation, when every man in that crowd feels that he too has some part and possession in all the compelling, alluring splendour and success of life.

And just behind the royal cavalier, among the glittering group of aides-de-camp, rode the young Marchese Balbi. He was so near that Dino could scarcely believe their eyes did not actually meet; but if Gasparo recognised him he gave no sign, riding on with a smile upon his happy face, his silver-mounted accoutrements s.h.i.+ning bravely in the sun.

And so, for the first time, the doomed King pa.s.sed by.

Dino scarcely heeded him; at that moment he had forgotten everything unconnected with the sight of that one familiar face. His mother, his old home,--Italia even,--had grown dim and unreal; he forgot them all in the sensation of that quick rush of renewed affection. All the old pride, the old delight, in Gasparo, which had made so great a part of his boyhood, came back upon him with the irresistible claims of reawakened tenderness. He was there to commit a murder; and out of all that crowd he saw only the one face which he knew--and he loved it.

That curious sense of floating away, far away from everything living, fell upon him again. He lost all count of time. He could never tell how long it was before he heard little Palmira cry out in shrill tones of childish excitement:

'I see him, Dino. There he comes again. The King, the King all in gold!'

Dino started, it seemed to him as if he started wide awake. He drew himself up like a soldier standing at attention; his brain was steady; his senses all alert. He watched eagerly, the white plumes were slowly advancing between the two serried ranks of the soldiery. He waited until he could distinguish the King's face distinctly; he saw him lean a little forward and pat his restive horse----.

And then, without turning, he gave Valdez the preconcerted signal.

And even as he raised the handkerchief to his lips he heard, not ten paces off, the sharp ringing report of a shot.

It was all over in an instant--the sound--the plunging of the frightened horses. He saw the white plume of the King pa.s.s by unscathed, and Gasparo Balbi, who was riding nearest him, throw up his arms and fall backward, quietly, into the rising cloud of dust.

A great cry broke from the people all about him--it rang in his ears--it sounded far away like the beating of a furious tide upon the distant, distant sh.o.r.e. A blackness, a horrible blackness which he could feel, pa.s.sed over his face like a cloud. And then he knew nothing more.

Some quarter of an hour later one of the two _guardie_ who were helping to lift his insensible body into a street cab looked compa.s.sionately down at Dino's clenched hands and pallid death-like face.

''Tis no wonder the poor giovane fainted,' he said sympathetically, addressing the little crowd about him. ''Tis no wonder he fainted.

_Perdio!_ as it so happens I was looking straight at him,--he was not ten paces away from the villain who fired the shot.'

CHAPTER XII.

VESTIGIA NULLA RETRORSUM.

One cloudless April morning, some three weeks later, the warm bright suns.h.i.+ne was making a pleasant difference even to the prisoners who were taking their usual hour of exercise between the four high walls of the paved courtyard at the Carcere Nuove. But there was one among them, a middle-aged man with gray hair and a curiously piercing look in his heavy-lidded eyes, who seemed to be expecting something beside the blue sky and the soft air of this balmy morning. And presently that something came.

The other prisoners looked after him rather enviously as he left the court in answer to the turnkey's imperative summons. Apparently he had been sent for to speak to a friend; they grumbled a little between themselves at this sign of the governor's favour.

It was Dino de Rossi who was waiting for Valdez in that small high-walled cell. The two men had not met since the morning of the attempted a.s.sa.s.sination; they grasped hands and looked into one another's face with an emotion which lay too deep for mere speech.

Presently the older man's mouth relaxed into a faint smile. 'Well, lad. So you have come to see me. You are looking better. They told me you were very ill, and I've been anxious about you,' he said simply.

'I came to you as soon as I could get up,' Dino answered, in a voice that was broken with repressed feeling. He looked about him, at the prison bed, the grated window, the bare stone walls. 'You've put yourself here,--here, in my place, Valdez. Valdez, it nearly drives me mad to remember it. I'd give half my life if I could change places with you to-day.'

'Nay, my lad, there's nothing the matter with the place. It's comfortable enough; and it's of my own choosing. Come, come, my Dino; you're weak still with the fever; sit down, lad, sit down.'

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