But now you may see, plain enough, what the wicked old man meant when he pointed down in that way. He thought to make his young wife believe that her lover--as he would call him; though he knew the word, as he used it, was a lie--was still living, and that, too, underground, where a ray of light might hardly penetrate, at high-noon; and almost surely, too, the victim of starvation and tortures she shuddered to think of; even for witches or Jews--aye, even for heretics! She could see the whole tale in the cruelty of her princely husband's eyes; except, indeed, his victim was really dead, slain by the cruel blow she herself had seen; and seeing it, what wonder was it that she longed only to know that he was dead; for then she could die too? But to slip away and leave Giacinto still alive!--in a damp vault with the old bones of those who had died and been buried there, so that none should know of them; and neither day nor the coming of night, but only one long darkness, and not one word from her, and ignorance of whether she herself still lived or died. Surely, if she were to die and leave him thus in ignorance, her ghost would rise from the grave to be beside him in the darkness of his dungeon; and then how her heart would break to speak with him, and be--as might chance--half-heard, and serve only to add a new terror to his loneliness. Such things I could guess she felt in her heart. I could not feel them now myself, not being la Maddalena as she was at this moment. I am still, as I was then, the Maddalena as she laughed back, from the daïs she sat on, her delight in response to the pleasure in her young painter's eye; and all she became after is--to me--like a tale she might have heard, or some sad pretty ballad one gives a tear to and forgets. But I can fancy, and maybe you can too, how her whole young soul was wrenched as she flung herself at her old tormentor's feet, and besought him in words that I would myself have wept for gladly--had God not made me as I am--to tell her truly, only to tell her, was he living or dead? She would ask no more than just that much of his clemency. What wrong had she done him?--what had Giacinto?--that he should make her think the sun itself a nightmare; for it would shine on her, but never reach the black pit below them, where, for all she knew, Giacinto might be now, at this very moment? Oh, would he not tell her? It was so little to ask!