Her lips moved; but she was too
terrified to answer. It was Giojoso who stepped forward to inform my
mother of the girl's name and condition. And upon learning it her anger
seemed to increase.
"A kitchen-wench!" she cried. "0 horror!"
And quite suddenly, as if by inspiration, scarce knowing what I said or
that I spoke at all, I answered her out of the store of the theological
learning with which she had had me stuffed.
"We are all equals in the sight of God, madam mother."
She flashed me a glance of anger, of pious anger than which none can be
more terrible.
"Blasphemer!" she denounced me. "What has God to do with this?"
She waited for no answer, rightly judging, perhaps, that I had none to
offer.
"And as for that wanton," she commanded, turning fiercely to Giojoso, "let
her be whipped hence and out of the town of Mondolfo. Set the grooms to
it."
But upon that command of hers I leapt of a sudden to my feet, a tightening
about my heart, and beset by a certain breathlessness that turned me pale.
Here again, it seemed, was to be repeated--though with methods a thousand
times more barbarous and harsh--the wrong that was done years ago in the
case of poor Gino Falcone. And the reason for it in this instance was not
even dimly apparent to me.
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