At the center of the platform where Della Preda was daily led, a guard house was built which divided it in two, save for narrow passages, and limited the view on the side of the country. As he placed his foot on the last step, the prisoner had opposite him, to his left, the town which stood out in the distance, full of square belfries and domes; to the right was the blue gulf.
A church with flying buttresses, heavy and in ruins, first draws the unaccustomed glance and fixes it by the splendor of its brilliantly ornamented madonna. When the setting sun sank to the end of the pointed niche and bathed her with rays, the rubies and chrysolites of her tiara, the lepidolites and topazes of her starred aureola reflected the brilliance of luminaries and the faced adorned with diamond eyes looked rapturous.
The first time that Guido climbed to the tower was an evening when the sun was setting. He saw neither the flashing town with its green terraces, nor the blue bay with its white sails; but, uttering a cry, he asked:
"Down there! Down there! Who is that lady?"
"That lady? What lady?" repeated Veltro, with an astonished, already uneasy eye.
"Yes, that lady in front of the church of the Orphans?"
"Ah! you mean above the portal? That's the Novella, my lord," Veltro replied, baring his head as he pronounced the name, "a blessed and benevolent madonna. You can hardly see her well from below, the street is too narrow, but everybody knows that she is there, and that is enough."
"What an agreeable woman!" answered Guido. "O Novella! Protect me and love me!"
He knelt, bending his head, and when he stood up, after the last words of his supplicating _ave_, the _Novella_ was smiling, full of grace and tenderness.
"So you accept my prayer? Thanks, madonna! Deign to receive me as your worshiper, let my breathing be a praise to your immaculate tenderness, to your sovereign grace. Open your goodness to the irrevocable gift of my life. Let me be to you as the pupil to the eye which moves it as it wills. Trample me with the blessed weight of the adorable feet which crushed the serpent! Let my flesh, for love of you, be withered, my bones broken, my blood shed. Ah! I love you, I Novella, blessed and benevolent madonna!"