Doctor Graziano ran about anxiously; regretted that he had not a smelling-bottle about him; searched in all his pockets, and at length pulled out a roasted chestnut, which he held under the nose of the insensible Pasquarello. The latter recovered at once, sneezing violently, begged him to excuse the weak state of his nerves, and went on to say that after the marriage Marianna had fallen into the deepest melancholy, calling continually on Antonio's name, and regarding the old man with loathing and contempt. But the latter, blinded by his love and jealousy, had never ceased torturing her in the most terrible manner with his foolishness. Then Pasquarello related a number of mad tricks which Pasquale had been guilty of, and which were actually told of him in Rome. Signor Pasquale jigged uneasily on his seat here and there, murmuring, "Accursed Formica, you lie!--what devil inspires you?" It was only the fact that Torricelli and Cavalcanti kept their grave eyes fixed upon him that restrained a wild outburst of his anger. Pasquarello ended by saying that the luckless Marianna had at last fallen a victim to her unstilled love-longing, her bitter sorrow, and the thousand-fold tortures which the accursed old man had inflicted upon her, and had passed away from this world, in the flower of her age. At this moment there was heard an awe-inspiring _De profundis_, chanted by hoarse and hollow voices; and men in long white mantles appeared upon the stage bearing a bier, on which lay the body of the beautiful Marianna, shrouded in white grave-clothes. Signor Pasquale Capuzzi, in the deepest mourning, tottered along behind it, moaning aloud, beating his breast, and crying, in his despair, "Oh, Marianna! Marianna!" When the Capuzzi in the audience saw the body of his niece, both the Capuzzis (him on the stage and he of the audience) howled, and cried in the most heart-breaking tones: "Oh, Marianna! Oh, Marianna! Miserable man that I am! Ah me! Ah me!" Imagine the corpse of the beautiful girl on the open tier, Surrounded by the mourners, their solemn _De profundis_, and along with all this, the comic masks, Doctor Graziano and Pasquarello, expressing their grief in the most absurd gesticulations; and then the two Capuzzis, howling and crying in despair. And in truth, all they who were spectators of this strangest of dramatic representations, notwithstanding the irrepressible laughter into which they could not help breaking over the extraordinary old man, were penetrated by a deep and eerie shudder of awe. The stage now suddenly grew dark. There was thunder and lightning; and out of the depths arose a pale and spectral form, exactly alike in every feature to Capuzzi's brother, Pietro, father of Marianna, who died in Senegaglia. "Wicked Pasquale!" cried the spectre-form, in hollow, terrible tones; "what have you done with my daughter? Despair and die, accursed murderer of my child! Your reward awaits you in hell!"