The madonna accepted the pact: a sign denoted her wish, her choice and her pleasure. Three times her eyelids drooped over her eyes and three times they were raised. Then night fell and it seemed to Guido that a most notable miracle had suspended, for several instants, the sun at the horizon's edge.
"He is guilty, quite guilty," Veltro reflected, "but he has piety, he regrets his crimes. May the madonna listen to him!"
"Listen to me, my lord," added the jailor, "and know that there is no better recourse in the world than to implore the _Novella_. You see it is not for nothing that she is called the Madonna of the Orphans! Her arms always are open and she does not carry a babe because all God's creatures are her children. She is the only one, at least to my knowledge. _Santa Madonna degli Orfani, ora pro nobis_."
During the two months that the Novella had been Guido's mistress, she had given him only happiness, charming and adorable happiness. He loved her and she smiled upon his love, except on certain days when a light cloud made ashen the pure face or the clear eyes of the beloved. He loved and, absorbed in his worship, felt himself loved. At first apprehensive, his tenderness now grew daring. The gentle but eternal smile no longer sufficed. The lover felt passion's boldness grow in his heart, like an imprisoned rose impelled by its sap to throw the living treasure of its purple to the broad day-light. The hour was approaching when the timid adorer would demand some tokens from the silent adored one, oh! the merest tokens of an adoration that was shared; the hour was approaching, the hour of communion, the spiritual hour which takes its sister by the hand, the hour of serious and tender eyes, the hour of strong caresses--the carnal hour.
The dark day which he passed under the hammer strokes of the pitiless clock was all the more painful to Guido since he had chosen it for definite questionings. Like all others, like lovers, he wished to know how matters stood, when it is simple to direct one's own questions and answers: but that is perhaps what he did, and why do anything else?
Veltro explained. It had been the fête of San Gaetano, the country his wife came from, about two leagues from Naples. He had received permission, had left, like a mad-cap, without informing the valet charged with his duties. "Would his lord the prisoner be good enough to forgive him?"