Nay, how should she not believe them? And how implicitly she must have believed them to have endured so much in hope of averting this doom!
\"Marina! Carina!\" his heart went out to her in a great wail of pity; a woman—so tender, so young—kneeling at night in her chapel, alone with the vision of the horror she was praying to avert; bearing the fasting and the penance and the weakness, all alone, in the hope that God would be merciful; gathering up her failing strength so bravely for that thankless scene in the Senate. And he, her husband, who had never meant that his love should fail her, could have spared her all this pain by a little comprehension! Could she ever forgive him? And would she understand some day? Might he reason it all out lovingly with her when her strength came back to her—\"For baby''''s sake!\" that sweet, womanly, natural plea which he had disregarded?
\"Signor Santorio,\" he moaned, \"if I might but reason with her, I might cure her!\"
\"Nay,\" said Santorio, \"not yet; the shadow hath not left her eyes. Let her forget.\"
She had been growing stronger, they said, doing quite passively the things they asked of her toward her restoration; she recognized them all, but she expressed neither wish nor emotion, lying chiefly with closed eyes in the cavernous depths of the great invalid chair where they laid her each day, yet responding by some movement if they called her name—rarely with any words; nothing roused her from that mood of unbroken brooding.
\"She will not forget,\" the great Santorio said in despair. \"We must try to rouse her. Let her child be brought.\"
The ghost of a smile flitted for an instant about her pale lips and over the shadowy horror in her eyes, as Marcantonio leaned over her with their boy in his arms. \"Carina,\" he cried imploringly, \"our little one needeth thee!\"
She half-opened her arms, but this wraith of the mother, he remembered, frightened the child, who clung sobbing to his father.
Marina fell back with a cry of grief, struggling for the words which came slowly—her first connected speech since her illness. \"It is the curse! It parts even mothers and children!\"
A strange strength seemed to have come to her; a sudden light gleamed in her eyes; she turned from one to the other, as if seeking some one in authority to answer her question, and fixed upon Santorio''''s as the strongest face.
\"The official acts of a Pope are infallible?\" she questioned, with feverish insistence, after the first futile attempt to speak. \"The Holy Father who succeeds him may not undo his acts of mercy?\"
\"Yes, yes, it is true,\" Santorio assented, waiting eagerly for the sequence.
A little color had crept into her cheeks; her hands were burning; they grasped the physician''''s arm like a vise; the change was alarming.
\"The edict cannot hurt my baby! Santissima Maria, thou hast saved him!\" \"We cannot keep her mind from it,\" said Santorio, aside to Marcantonio; \"it is essential to calm it with the right view—no argument, it might induce the most dangerous excitement. Send for some bishop or theologian who takes the right view; let him present it as a fact, and with authority; her life depends upon it.\"
He leaned down to his patient in deep commiseration to tell her that all was well—that Venice was under no ban, that God''''s blessing still shielded her churches and her children; but she raised her eyes steadily to his, and the strength of the belief, which he saw clearly written within them, filled him with awe and hushed his speech. How was it possible to make her understand!
\"Nay,\" said Marina faintly, still holding him with her sad, solemn eyes, \"do not speak. Since Fra Francesco comes no more there is but one who speaketh truth to me. It is the vision of my beautiful Mater Dolorosa of San Donato, which leaveth me not.\"
There was a stir in the depths of the streets below—a noise of the populace coming nearer, following along the banks of the Canal Grande, as if the cause of their excitement were in some hurried movement on its placid waters; the shouts and jeers of the strident voices were broken by authoritative commands of the Signori della Notte—the officers of police—and the tramp of their guards failing to create order; and above the hubbub rose the cry, distinctly repeated again and again—the cry of an angry populace, \"Andè in malora! Andè in malora!\" (\"Curses go with you!\")