"'"Does he still sleep--will he sleep?" It is my Maddalena who asks. And la Marta replies, "_Non c'e pericolo_! No fear!" But I see across the shoulder of my darling, as she stoops over me again and tries to clear my brow of tangled hair--but, you may well think, to little purpose--I see that the old woman holds somewhat up, hanging from betwixt her finger and old thumb, to show to Attilio. And he laughs to see the little knife and its sharp point, but below his breath, as guilt laughs to guilt. But this my beloved heeds not; she is busy with my hair. "'I can tell but little now from what I saw with my own eyes of what happened in the sequel, till I found myself here again in the little old Castello in the hills where I passed all the early years of my boyhood, in the family of my wife's father, now dead; though her mother still lived, and for many years after that. What I do remember comes to me as the speech of those about him reaches the sleeper who half wakes, to sleep and dream again. "'I can recollect riding, behind Attilio this time, down the stony road I had come up in such pain behind his comrade. I can just recollect the barking of the great dogs in the Castle court when we came away; whereon my Maddalena spoke earnestly to one of them, Leone, and he went and carried her speech to the others, and they were silent, though some made protest under their full utterance. And though I saw the janitors and porters at the great gate in deep sleep, I did not then know of the cunning work of the old Marta, who, indeed, was learned in the use of drugs, and could as easily have poisoned them all as made them sleep. Indeed, it was said by many that the clever Duchess of Ferrara, the sister of Cesare Borgia, had learned somewhat of the art of poisoning in her youth from this same Marta Zan. But of this I can say nothing with certainty. "'But this I do know, that this Marta, who was then near on eighty years of age, having received the reward she had earned of five hundred crowns, and another five hundred for a _buona mano_, did not accompany us, on the score of her age, being unable to mount a horse. But, as you may guess, Eccellenza, it was she who had occasioned the old Duke's death, and none of my doing, as was said by some, though the certainty that the knife used was the girdle-dagger of the fat Castellan Ferretti was held a sure proof of his guilt, and led to his being _giustiziato_ some months later. And she chose this way of sending her old betrayer to Hell rather than that of poison, seeing that her skill in this last was so well known to all that there was none other in the household on whom suspicion could have fallen. On which account, as I have since understood, she returned again to his bedside to see her work secure, and replaced the knife in the wound, whereby the guilt of his death was fixed on the fat Ferretti. I can in nowise guess why la Marta so long deferred her revenge against the Duke, except it was...'"