With his eyes raised to the brass crucifix upon the altar he saw nothing, heard nothing, but gave himself wholly to his entreaties, supplicating God to take him in place of his nephew, if a sacrifice were necessary, and yet clinging to the hope that so long as Dario retained a breath of life and he himself thus remained on his knees addressing the Deity, he might succeed in pacifying the wrath of Heaven.

He was both so humble and so great.

Would not accord surely be established between God and a Boccanera?
The old palace might have fallen to the ground, he himself would not even have felt the toppling of its beams.
In the bed-room, however, nothing had yet stirred beneath the weight of tragic majesty which the ceremony had left there.

It was only now that Dario raised his eyelids, and when on looking at his hands he saw them so aged and wasted the depths of his eyes kindled with an expression of immense regretfulness that life should be departing.

Doubtless it was at this moment of lucidity amidst the kind of intoxication with which the poison overwhelmed him, that he for the first time realised his perilous condition.