THE NINTH MAN
friend? It would be a great pity to have so merry a tongue silenced for the whim of a spiteful cripple. I will send my men when you wish—this very night, perhaps. For his malicious face does not please me as I go to and fro. What say you, Matteo?"
"I say I cannot, my lord," I answered in a low voice. It was as though some one else spoke within me, for God knows life would have been sweet to me without that jeering face that had taught me to know the black heart of San Moglio.
That evening, like a fool, I told Simonetta, and she wept in my arms, crying that I did not love her. "I would kill him," cried she; "I would stamp on him as I would crush a spider," and there came back to me Mazzaleone's words:
"And were you to find mercy in the hearts of all men, Matteo, yet would you not have softened the merciless hearts of loving women."
I hungered for the peace and rest that death of the cobbler's son would give me, and, doing so, perceived that the whole city of San Moglio was a battle-field as was my own heart; that each soul which had the
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