Part 62 (1/2)

CLAUDIA.

True. Hear, then, Marquis Marinelli. Your name, accompanied with a curse----but no--I will not wrong the n.o.ble man--the curse was inferred by myself--your name was the last word uttered by the dying Count.

MARINELLI.

The dying Count? Count Appiani?----You hear, Madam, what most surprises me in this your strange address--the dying Count?--What else you mean to imply, I know not.

CLAUDIA (_with asperity, and in a deliberate tone_).

Marinelli was the last word uttered by the dying Count.--Do you understand me now? I myself did not at first understand it, though it was spoken in a tone--a tone which I still hear. Where were my senses that I could not understand it instantly?

MARINELLI.

Well, Madam, I was always the Count's friend--his intimate friend. If, therefore, he p.r.o.nounced my name at the hour of death----

CLAUDIA.

In that tone!--I cannot imitate--I cannot describe it--but it signified----everything. What! Were we attacked by robbers? No--by a.s.sa.s.sins--by hired a.s.sa.s.sins: and Marinelli was the last word uttered by the dying Count, in such a tone----

MARINELLI.

In such a tone? Did any one ever hear that a tone of voice used in a moment of terror could be a ground of accusation against an honest man?

CLAUDIA.

Oh that I could appear before a tribunal of justice, and imitate that tone? Yet, wretch that I am! I forget my daughter. Where is she--dead too? Was it my daughter's fault that Appiani was thy enemy?

MARINELLI.

I revere the mother's fears, and therefore pardon you.--Come, Madam.

Your daughter is in an adjoining room, and I hope her alarms are by this time at an end. With the tenderest solicitude is the Prince himself employed in comforting her.

CLAUDIA.

Who?

MARINELLI.

The Prince.

CLAUDIA.

The Prince! Do you really say the Prince--our Prince?

MARINELLI.

Who else should it be?