They arrived in another minute at the door of the Palazzo
Castelmare. The servants ran out, and they carried him up into the
chamber where, ever since that fatal Ash Wednesday morning, he had,
as Fortini now well understood, been suffering a long agony of
remorse, apprehension, despair, all the intensity of which it was
difficult to appreciate.
Life was not yet extinct when they laid him upon his bed; and the
Professor proceeded to do what the rules of his science prescribed
in the all but hopeless effort to combat the attack. But the
miserable man had suffered his last in this life, and every effort
to bring him back to further torture was unavailing. Within half-an-
hour after he had been brought back to his palace he breathed his
last.
"It is all over with him," said the Professor, looking up across the
bed to the lawyer standing on the other side of it; "there was no
possibility of prolonging his life--happily for him, and happily for
everybody connected with him, and for all of us. Who would have
thought a short month ago that such a life could have so ended?"
"The 24th of March, Signor Professore, is the anniversary on which,
more fervently than on any other day of the year, I thank God for
all his mercies," said the lawyer, with grim solemnity.
"I don't understand you, Signor Dottore; what has the 24th of March
to do with this?" said Tomosarchi, staring at him.
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