The Capuzzi on the stage fell down as if struck by lightning, and at the same instant the Capuzzi down beneath fell senseless from his seat. The branches rustling, closed into their former places; and the stage, with Marianna and Capuzzi, and Pietro's grizzly ghost, disappeared from view. Signor Pasquale was in such a deep faint that it cost some trouble to bring him to himself again. At last he revived, with a deep sigh, stretched his hands out before him as if to keep off the terror which seized upon him, and cried in hollow tones: "Let me go, Pietro!" A stream of tears burst from his eyes, and he cried, with sobs: "Ah, Marianna!--my darling beautiful girl!--my own Marianna!" "Bethink you!" said Cavalcanti at last. "Consider Signor Pasquale! It was only on the stage that you saw your niece dead. She is alive. She is here, to implore your forgiveness for the thoughtless stratagem to which love--and, perhaps, your own inconsiderate conduct--impelled her." Here Marianna, with Antonio Scacciati behind her, rushed forward from the back of the hall, and fell at the feet of the old gentleman, who had been placed in an easy chair. Marianna, in the fullest lustre of her beauty, kissed his hands, bedewed them with hot tears, and begged forgiveness for herself and Antonio, united to her by the Church's benediction. From the old man's deathly pale face flames suddenly broke, fury flashed from his eyes, and he cried in a half-articulate voice: "Ha! abandoned wretch!--venomous serpent! whom I nourished in my bosom, for my destruction!" But the grave old Torricelli came up to him, in all his dignity, and said that he (Capuzzi) had seen in a figure the fate which would inevitably overtake him if he dared to prosecute his evil design against the peace and happiness of Antonio and Marianna. He painted, in the most brilliant colours, the folly--the madness--of amorous old age yielding to love, which has the power of bringing down upon its head the most destroying evil with which Heaven can threaten man, since it annihilates all the affection which might still be his portion, whilst hatred and contempt aim their death-dealing arrows at him from every side. And Marianna cried out, in a tone which penetrated the heart: "Oh, my uncle! I want to love and honour you as a father! You will bring me to the bitter death if you take Antonio from me!" And all the poets who were surrounding the old man cried, with one voice, that it was impossible that such an one as Signor Pasquale Capuzzi di Senegaglia--a lover and patron of the arts, himself an admirable and accomplished artist--should not forgive; that he, who occupied the position of a father to the loveliest of women, should not welcome with joy, as a son-in-law, a painter such as Antonio Scacciati, prized by the whole of Italy, overwhelmed with honour and fame.