"Gonfalonière!" he cried, furiously--"Gonsalvo di Vasari! Hold once more! Reflect--there is a line beyond which human suffering does not pass! The meanest wretch in Florence, who cares not for his own life, holds the fate of the highest among ye at his mercy. You feel that you dare not, for fifty times your titles and possessions, commit this villany you meditate, and let me live. There are others--companions--friends--reflect on it!--who will be left behind, and whom an act like this will rouse to certain vengeance. You have no fault to charge on this helpless woman. You can gain nothing of that you seek from her. You sacrifice her to gain that which cannot be gained--for, so help me Heaven in my last hour, I have it not!--from me. Beware! for no deed like that of tyranny and baseness ever passed unpunished. Do not drive a trodden-down wretch to desperation! Do not rush uselessly upon an act which will stand alone in the annals of infamy and crime!--Or, tell me at least," continued Arionelli, passionately, "if there is indeed no hope--no chance--of mercy! Before you ruin your own objects, and mine, past helping--Signor di Vasari--I know whom it is I have to deal with--Definitively--what is it that you demand?" "For the last time," said Gonsalvo di Vasari, "that this Court will deign to question--full confession as to the fate of my cousin, the Chevalier Lorenzo." "If he be dead?" "A token of his death, and the story of its manner." "And though he _be_ dead, shall Aurelia then be free?" The Gonfalonière replied--"Of that you have our pledge." The outlaw paused for a moment, anxiously, and in thought.--"My Lord di Vasari," he said, "I have already sworn that I had no share in your cousin's fate. I believe that he has fallen. But means of inquiry I have none, except by message to those who are beyond your warrant, and who knew more of Dominico Torelli's latter course than I know. Who but myself can do an errand such as this? Who else can search out those who hold life only while they are not found? And me you will not part with? There is but one resource. Aurelia knows the haunts of my band; she can seek those whose aid I need, and will be trusted by them as myself. Let me then be carried back to prison; and let her depart whither I direct; and if in twenty-four hours she return not with some intelligence, my life shall answer the event." "Would it not be safer to reverse that arrangement?" said Gonsalvo, significantly,--"to retain Aurelia here in prison; and suffer you, Arionelli, in whom I trust more than you credit, to depart?"