We crossed an antechamber whose heavy carpet muffled our footsteps, and we halted before tapestry curtains that masked a door, Here, curbing my fierce impatience, I paused. I signed to the five attendant soldiers to come no farther; then I consigned the courtier who had guided us to the care of Falcone, and I restrained Cavalcanti, who was shaking from head to foot. I raised the heavy, muffling curtain, and standing there an instant by the door, I heard my Bianca's voice, and her words seemed to freeze the very marrow in my bones. “O, my lord,” she was imploring in a choking voice, “O, my lord, have pity on me!” “Sweet,” came the answer, “it is I who beseech pity at your hands. Do you not see how I suffer? Do you not see how fiercely love of you is torturing me--how I burn--that you can so cruelly deny me?” It was Farnese's voice. Cosimo, that dastard, had indeed carried out the horrible compact of which Giuliana had warned me, carried it out in a more horrible and inhuman manner than even she had suggested or suspected. Cavalcanti would have hurled himself against the door but that I set a hand upon his arm to restrain him, and a finger of my other hand--the one that held the dagger--to my lips. Softly I tried the latch. I was amazed to find the door yield. And yet, where was the need to lock it? What interruption could he have feared in a house that evidently had been delivered over to him by the bridegroom, a house that was in the hands of his own people? Very quietly I thrust the door open, and we stood there upon the threshold--Cavalcanti and I--father and lover of that sweet maid who was the prey of this foul Duke. We stood whilst a man might count a dozen, silent witnesses of that loathsome scene. The bridal chamber was all hung in golden arras, save the great carved bed which was draped in dead-white velvet and ivory damask--symbolizing the purity of the sweet victim to be offered up upon that sacrificial altar. And to that dread sacrifice she had come--for my sake, as I was to learn--with the fearful willingness of Iphigenia. For that sacrifice she had been prepared; but not for this horror that was thrust upon her now. She crouched upon a tall-backed praying-stool, her gown not more white than her face, her little hands convulsively clasped to make her prayer to that monster who stood over her, his mottled face all flushed, his eyes glowing as they considered her helplessness and terror with horrible, pitiless greed. Thus we observed them, ourselves unperceived for some moments, for the praying-stool on which she crouched was placed to the left, by the cowled fire-place, in which a fire of scented wood was crackling, the scene lighted by two golden candlebranches that stood upon the table near the curtained window.