Ludovico turned his eyes alternately towards the captain, the Count, and the flower, and was about to interpose a word or two of expostulation. “Silence!” cried the commandant; “silence, and do your duty.” Thus fiercely admonished, Ludovico held his peace; removing the pipe once more from his mouth, he extinguished it, shook out the dust, and deposited it on the edge of the wall while he proceeded to business. Deliberately laying aside his cap, his waistcoat, and rubbing his hands as if to gain courage for the job, he paused a moment, then suddenly, with a movement of anger, as if against himself or his chief, seized the haybands and matting, and dispersed them over the court. Next went the uprights which had supported them, which he tore up one after the other, broke over his knee, and threw the pieces on the pavement. His former tenderness for Picciola seemed suddenly converted into a fit of abhorrence. Charney, meanwhile, stood motionless and stupefied, his eyes fixed wistfully upon the plant thus exposed to view, as if his looks could still afford protection to its helplessness. The day had been cool, the sky overclouded, and from the stem, which had rallied during the night, sprang several little healthy, verdant shoots. It seemed as though Picciola were collecting all her strength to die! _To die!_ Picciola!—his own, his only!—the world of his existence and his dreams, the pivot on which revolved his very life, to be reduced to nothingness! Midway in his aspirations towards a higher sphere, the flight of the poor captive, over whose head heaven has suspended its sentence of expiation, is to be suddenly arrested! How will he henceforward fill up the vacant moments of his leisure? how satisfy the aching void in his own bosom? Picciola, the desert which thou didst people is about to become once more a solitary wilderness! No more visions, no more hopes, no more reminiscences, no more discoveries to inscribe, no farther objects of affection! How narrow will his prison now appear—how oppressive its atmosphere—the atmosphere of a tomb—the tomb of Picciola! The golden branch—the sibylline divining rod, which sufficed to exorcise the evil spirits by which he was beset, will no longer protect him against himself! The sceptic—the disenchanted philosopher, must return to his former mood of incredulity, and bear once more the burden of his bitter thoughts, with no prospect before him but eternal extinction! No, death were a thousand times preferable to such a destiny! As these thoughts glanced through the mind of Charney, he beheld, at the little grated window, the shadow of the venerable Girardi. “Alas!” murmured the Count, “I have deprived him of all he had to live for; and he comes to triumph over my affliction—to curse me—to deride me! And he is right; for what are sorrows such as mine compared to those I have heaped upon his revered head?”