“‘Death is at all times a ghastly spectacle, but there are hours and seasons wherein its presence inspires far less horror than at others; the bed of sickness—the darkened room—the lighted tapers—the priest murmuring consolation to the lingering soul—these are the natural attendants on death, and soften the disgust and dread that we feel at its approach. But here, in the full light of the rising dawn, the birds carolling amid the branches—the distant song of the merry vintagers who were already busy at their labours on the opposite hill—all seemed to jar upon the feelings, and to inspire a supernatural horror, from which I am not free even now when thinking of that hour. I raised my brother in my arms. He had fallen forward from the bank, for his head was in the water, which circumstance I thought at first might have caused suffocation. The bank was steep and slippery, likely to have given way beneath his feet, and he must have been thus precipitated into the water, whence he could not extricate himself without help. This was my first impression, but, as I raised that lifeless form to the light, I perceived a deep and ghastly wound in his side, from which the blood had flowed, not freely, but in a thick, turbid pool, and, as it were, drop by drop! The knife with which the deed was done lay by his side upon the grass. I recognised it as his own—my father’s gift to him when a boy—the very knife he must have used to cut the branch from the alder, as the signal of his arrival in the garden. Cesario had died thus, this miserable death, while I had been the whole night within sight of his dying struggles—within hearing of his dying groan, and yet had seen, had heard nothing—and when tired of cursing his tardiness, had sat me down and _slept_ almost within arm’s length of his bleeding corpse!
“‘The event caused the greatest consternation throughout the whole country. We were much beloved, for my father’s sake, and every inquiry was set on foot which could lead to a discovery of the means by which Cesario had met his death. But every measure proved fruitless, and I was forced to console myself with the opinion of Giordoni, who expressed a conviction that my brother, giving way to the melancholy which so long had preyed upon his mind, had committed suicide. The letter I had received seemed to many, by its tone of mystery, to betray symptoms of the excitement which usually precedes the execution of such a deed. Cesario was the first person buried in the new chapel of Saint Ignatius, Giordoni generously consenting to give absolution for his crime, and to attribute its commission to insanity.