"
He saw that they were driven to the last point. While the woman stood
as a figure of stone at the table, the three advanced toward him and
drove him back before their threatening swords. The new silence was
the silence of his death anticipated. He thought that his last word
was spoken in vain. Ten o'clock would never strike, he said. Yet even
as hope seemed to fail him, and he told himself that the end had come,
the bells of the city began to strike the hour, and the glorious music
of their echoes floated over the sleeping waters.
"A proof, you ask me for a proof, signori," he exclaimed triumphantly.
"Surely, the proof lies in yonder room, where all the world may see
it."
He pointed to a door opening in the wall of mirrors, and giving access
to a smaller chamber. Curiosity drove the men thither. They threw open
the door; they entered the room; they reeled back drunk with their own
terror.
For the body of Andrea, lord of Pisa, lay, still warm, upon the marble
pavement of the chamber, and the dagger with which he had been stabbed
was yet in his heart.
"A proof--have I not given you a proof?" the priest cried again, while
the woman's terrible cry rang through the house, and the three stood
close together, as men upon whom a judgment has fallen.
"Man or devil--who are you?" they asked in hushed whispers.
He answered them by letting his monk's robe slip from his shoulders.
As the robe fell, they beheld a figure clad in crimson velvet and
corselet of burnished gold; the figure of a man whose superb limbs had
been the envy of the swordsmen of Italy; whose face, lighted now with
a sense of power and of victory, was a face for which women had given
their lives.
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