"Beautifully adorned, and still beautiful!" cried Baluzzi, stepping nearer, "still as beautiful as once when you stood before the altar in the little church of San Giulio! Do not shrink from me--before others you are a bride elect, before others you may feign modesty, and wrap yourself in the bridal veil, not before me! I have an old and sacred right over you--your body, your soul belong to me, and to me alone; you cannot be separated from me so long as the indissoluble word of the Church exists upon earth, and I place my hand upon you as upon a runaway slave--Giulia Baluzzi, my wife!" And he went up to her, held the struggling woman with a strong arm, and laid the other hand upon her marble shoulder that quivered as if in the grip of a tiger cat. "Stand back, madman," whispered Giulia in a suppressed tone of alarm, "stand back, or I shall call for help." "You will not do so, my child! You will not call for help, not even if I murder you with my dagger! You would prefer to drop mutely into my arms, and with expiring eyes to implore me--for silence, for forgetfulness! Is it not so? A cry for help!--what is a cry for help but a cry for shame, for disgrace, for law and executioner? I know you better, my little dove; so imprudent you are not; the friend of Beate, the cunning robber of a church, possesses too much sense and understanding." "I shall call for help," said Giulia, with pride and defiance, now releasing herself from Baluzzi's arms. "And if I declare you before all the world to be a robber and a liar, all will deem your utterances to be madness, because the proofs are wanting." "The proofs are ready." "They were, perhaps; but they are no longer." "Haha," said Baluzzi, with a mocking laugh, "you rely upon your astute messenger, upon Beate, who lays her devil's paw upon the altar candles and registers, at the ghostly hour of midnight lights a firebrand in a sacristy. A harmless amusement! Had it not been so harmless I should have prevented it, but it was great amusement for me to watch the lizard as it glided into the crevices in the church walls, and to carry on a game with it; unfortunately she swooned too soon. I should have liked to torture her still longer, have made her bones rattle, the good-for-nothing! You all possess courage only up to a certain point; the little witch, too, showed courage, but then, in a moment, it goes out like a candle that has burned down, that has consumed itself all too speedily." "But the proofs are destroyed," said Giulia, although doubtfully and alarmed at Baluzzi's scorn, because she could not help fearing that by some means Beate's undertaking had failed.