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Page 42
"Observe, monsieur, how like the great heroes of legend - like
the wounded Saul when he ordered his armor-bearer to kill him;
like Brutus when he fell on his sword!"
He looked intently at the American.
"Doubtless, monsieur," he went on, "those near this man along the
Monongahela did not appreciate his attitude of grandeur; but to
us, in the distance, it seemed great and noble."
He looked out over the Mediterranean, where the great adventurers
who cherished these lofty pagan ideals once beat along in the
morning of the world.
"On an afternoon of summer," he continued like one who begins a
saga, "this man, alone and fearless, followed a violator of the
law and arrested him in a house of the village. As he led the
man away he noticed that an Italian followed. He was a little
degenerate, wearing a green hat, and bearing now one name and now
another. They traversed the village toward, the municipal
prison; and this creature, featured like a Parisian Apache,
skulked behind.
"As they went along, two Austrians seated on the porch of a house
heard the little man speak to the prisoner. He used the word
sparate. They did not know what he meant, for he spoke in
Italian; but they recognized the word, for it was the word used
in the mines before the coal was shot down. The prisoner made
his reply in Italian, which the Austrians did not understand.
"It seemed that this man who had made the arrest did not know
Italian, for he stopped and asked the one behind him whether the
prisoner was his brother. The man replied in the negative."
The Count paused, as though for an explanation. "What the Apache
said was: `Shall I shoot him here or wait until we reach the
ravine?' And the prisoner replied: `Wait until we come to the
ravine.'
"They went on. Presently they reached a sort of hollow, where
the reeds grew along the road densely and to the height of a
man's head. Here the Italian Apache, the degenerate with the
green hat, following some three steps behind, suddenly drew a
revolver from his pocket and shot the man twice in the back. It
was a weapon carrying a lead bullet as large as the tip of one's
little finger. The officer fell. The Apache and the prisoner
fled.
"The wounded man got up. He spread out his arms; and he shouted,
with a great voice, like the heroes of the Iliad. The two wounds
were mortal; they were hideous, ghastly wounds, ripping up the
vital organs in the man's body and severing the great arteries.
The splendid pagan knew he had received his death wounds; and,
true to his atavistic ideal, the ideal of the Greek, the Hebrew
and the Roman, the ideal of the great pagan world to which he in
spirit belonged, and of which the poets sing, he put his own
weapon to his head and blew his brains out."
The old Count, his chin up, his withered, yellow face vitalized,
lifted his hands like one before something elevated and noble.
After some moments had passed he continued:
"On the following day the assassin was captured in a neighboring
village. Feeling ran so high that it was with difficulty that
the officers of the law saved him from being lynched. He was
taken about from one prison to another. Finally he was put on
trial for murder.
"There was never a clearer case before any tribunal in this
world.
"Many witnesses identified the assassin - not merely
English-speaking men, who might have been mistaken or prejudiced,
but Austrians, Poles, Italians - the men of the mines who knew
him; who had heard him cry out the fatal Italian word; who saw
him following in the road behind his victim on that Sunday
afternoon of summer; who knew his many names and every feature of
his cruel, degenerate face. There was no doubt anywhere in the
trial. Learned surgeons showed that the two wounds in the dead
man's back from the big-calibered weapon were deadly, fatal
wounds that no man could have survived.
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