She it was
who told me that our prayers pass not up beyond the clouds which hang
above a city under doom of interdict. Oh, Piero, hasten; for my strength
is little, and Rome is far!"
When the Lady of the Giustiniani had sent for Piero to meet her in Santa
Maria dell' Orto, to ask him to manage her escape to Rome, it had not
been possible to refuse her; all his attempts at reasoning were in vain.
"I must go," she said, with that invincible persistence which he never
could combat. "If thou wilt not help me, I go alone." She was kneeling
before the terrible "Judgment" of the Tintoret, and the face she had
lifted to him in appeal was white with agonized comprehension.
The journey had been long and wearisome; all day they had been slowly
toiling against the tide; and long since Piero had summoned to his aid a
trusted gondolier who had been ordered to follow them at a little
distance, and who, at a sign from the gastaldo, had silently left his
bark to drift and taken his place at the other end of the gondola in
which the fugitives were making their way to Padua.
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