"I suppose," said Fortini, to the men who crowded round the body,
while he paid attention to the Marchesino,--"I suppose that there
can be no doubt that she is dead?"
"She's as dead as the door she lies on," said one of the men who had
helped to carry the body, shaking his head gravely, as he looked
pitifully down on her; "as dead as the door she lies on, more's the
pity, for she looks like one of them that find it good to live,--
more's the pity,--more's the pity."
"Che bella donna! E proprio un viso d'angiolo," said another; "and
so young too. There's some heart somewhere that'll be sore for
this."
"Pretty creature; it is enough to break one's own heart to look at
her as she lies there," said a third. While a fourth of the rough
fellows stood and sobbed aloud, and let the tears run down his
furrowed cheeks, without the smallest effort to control or hide his
emotion. For an Italian, especially an Italian man of the people,
unlike the men of the Teuton races, is never ashamed of emotion. He
very often manifests a great deal which he does not genuinely feel;
but he never seeks to hide any that he does feel.
All this while the officials at the gate, some six or eight of them,
standing thus round the extemporized bier, were closely questioning
the men, who had been the bearers; Ludovico and the old lawyer were
thus shut out from the circle which had formed itself around the
body, and were on the outside of it.
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