The examination of the vicar did not come on until the third day. These seventy or eighty hours of suspense were terrible to him. He scarcely broke his fast, or was conscious of what he did. The whole of the time was passed by him listening in the court of justice, or praying in the churches. When at last he was summoned, a cold sweat bathed his face and hair; his hands trembled; he answered the interrogations of the judge and of the advocates almost at random; his replies seemed scarcely to be those of a rational being; he passionately affirmed her innocence with delirious repetition and emphasis, which produced on the minds of the examiners the contrary effect to that which he endeavoured to create. 'This priest knows that she is guilty,' thought the president. 'He knows it--perhaps he knows even more--perhaps he was her accomplice.' His evidence, his aspect, his wild and contradictory words, did as much harm to her cause as he ignorantly strove to do good. From other witnesses of Marca, the Court had learned that a great friendship had always been seen to exist between the vicar of San Bartolo and Generosa Fè, and that on the morning when the murder was discovered, the priest had removed the body of the dead man to the sacristy, forestalling the officers of justice and disturbing the scene of the murder. A strong impression against him was created beforehand in the audience and on the bench, and his pallid, agitated countenance, his incoherent words, his wild eyes, which incessantly sought the face of the prisoner, all gave him the appearance of a man conscious of some guilt himself and driven out of his mind by fear. The president cross-examined him without mercy, censured him, railed at him, and did his uttermost to extract the truth which he believed that Don Gesualdo concealed, but to no avail; incoherent and half-insane as he seemed, he said no syllable which could betray that which he really knew. Only when his eyes rested on Generosa, there was such an agony in them that she herself was startled by it. 'Who would ever have dreamt that he would have cared so much?' she thought. 'But he was always a tender soul; he always pitied the birds in the traps, and the oxen that went to the slaughter.' Reproved, and censured without stint, for the president knew that to insult a priest was to merit promotion in high quarters, Don Gesualdo was at last permitted to escape from his place of torture. Blind and sick he got away through the crowd, past the officials, down the stairs, and out into the hot air. The piazza was thronged with people who could not find standing room in the Court-house. The murmur of their rapid and loud voices was like the noise of a sea on his ears; they had all the same burden. They all repeated like one man the same words: 'They will condemn her,' and then wondered what sentence she would receive; whether a score of years of seclusion or a lifetime.