Magnani was cured; but what a sad cure, to renounce, at twenty-five, all the dreams of love! He was resigned to his fate; but from that moment life was to him nothing more than a stern and passionless duty. The reveries and torments which had made that duty dear to him no longer existed. Never was there a man on earth more utterly alone, more disgusted with all earthly things, than Magnani on the day of his deliverance. He left Fra Angelo and Michel, who proposed to go at once to Nicolosi, and passed the rest of the day walking alone by the seashore, opposite the basaltic isles of Acireale. The young prince and the monk started immediately after making up their minds to visit the Piccinino. They were approaching the ill-omened _Destatore's_ Cross when the bells of Catania, changing their rhythm, rang the knell that announces death. Fra Angelo crossed himself without stopping; Michel thought of his father, who had perhaps been assassinated by order of that wicked prelate, and quickened his pace in order to kneel upon the grave of Castro-Reale. He did not as yet feel the courage to examine that fatal cross, where he had experienced such painful emotions, even before he knew of the tie of blood that bound him to the bandit of Ætna. But a huge vulture, starting up suddenly from the very foot of the cross, forced him involuntarily to turn his eyes in that direction. For a moment he thought that he was the victim of a ghastly hallucination. A dead body lay in a pool of blood at the spot from which the vulture had fled. Frozen with horror, Michel and his uncle drew near and recognized the body of Abbé Ninfo, half disfigured by pistol shots fired at point-blank range. The murder had been premeditated or committed with extraordinary sang-froid, for the perpetrator had taken the time and trouble to write with chalk, in small letters, close together, on the black lava pedestal of the cross, this ferociously concise inscription: "Here was found, eighteen years ago to-day, the body of a celebrated brigand, _Il Destatore_, Prince of Castro-Reale, the avenger of the woes of his country. "Here will be found to-day the body of his assassin, Abbé Ninfo, who has confessed his participation in the crime. So cowardly a champion would not have dared to strike openly so gallant a man. He led him into a trap, into which he himself has fallen at last, after eighteen years of unpunished crimes. "More fortunate than Castro-Reale, who was struck down by slaves, Ninfo has fallen by the hand of a free man. "If you wish to know who condemned the _Destatore_ and paid for his murder, ask Satan, who, within an hour, will receive before his tribunal the wicked soul of Cardinal Hieronimo de Palmarosa. "Do not accuse Castro-Reale's widow: she is innocent. "Michel de Castro-Reale, there is still much blood to be shed before your father's death is avenged!