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whom she was pregnant, and was minded to know the whole truth: let the
damsel confess and she might regain his favour; otherwise she must expect
no mercy and prepare for death.
The lady did all she could to induce her husband to rest satisfied with
what she had told him; but all to no purpose. Mad with rage, he rushed,
drawn sword in hand, to his daughter's bedside (she, pending the parley,
having given birth to a boy) and cried out:--"Declare whose this infant
is, or forthwith thou diest." Overcome by fear of death, the damsel broke
her promise to Pietro, and made a clean breast of all that had passed
between him and her. Whereat the knight, grown fell with rage, could
scarce refrain from slaying her. However, having given vent to his wrath
in such words as it dictated, he remounted his horse and rode to Trapani,
and there before one Messer Currado, the King's lieutenant, laid
information of the wrong done him by Pietro, in consequence whereof
Pietro, who suspected nothing, was forthwith taken, and being put to the
torture, confessed all. Some days later the lieutenant sentenced him to
be scourged through the city, and then hanged by the neck; and Messer
Amerigo, being minded that one and the same hour should rid the earth of
the two lovers and their son (for to have compassed Pietro's death was
not enough to appease his wrath), mingled poison and wine in a goblet,
and gave it to one of his servants with a drawn sword, saying:--"Get thee
with this gear to Violante, and tell her from me to make instant choice
of one of these two deaths, either the poison or the steel; else, I will
have her burned, as she deserves, in view of all the citizens; which
done, thou wilt take the boy that she bore a few days ago, and beat his
brains out against the wall, and cast his body for a prey to the dogs."
Hearing the remorseless doom thus passed by the angry father upon both
his daughter and his grandson, the servant, prompt to do evil rather than
good, hied him thence.
Now, as Pietro in execution of his sentence was being scourged to the
gallows by the serjeants, 'twas so ordered by the leaders of the band
that he passed by an inn, where were three noblemen of Armenia, sent by
the king of that country as ambassadors to Rome, to treat with the Pope
of matters of the highest importance, touching a crusade that was to be;
who, having there alighted to rest and recreate them for some days, had
received not a few tokens of honour from the nobles of Trapani, and most
of all from Messer Amerigo. Hearing the tramp of Pietro's escort, they
came to a window to see what was toward; and one of them, an aged man,
and of great authority, Fineo by name, looking hard at Pietro, who was
stripped from the waist up, and had his hands bound behind his back,
espied on his breast a great spot of scarlet, not laid on by art, but
wrought in the skin by operation of Nature, being such as the ladies here
call a rose. Which he no sooner saw, than he was reminded of a son that
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