He wore no coat; and his arms were bound behind his back, at the elbows, leaving just motion enough to the hands to aid him in the slighter offices about his own person.

His neck was bare, and the fatal cord was tightened sufficiently around it to prevent accidents, constantly admonishing its victim of its revolting office.
A low murmur arose among the people in the boats as this spectacle presented itself to their eyes; and many bowed their faces in prayer.
The condemned man caught a ray of consolation from this expression of sympathy; and he looked around him an instant, with something like a return of those feelings of the world which it had been his effort and his desire totally to eradicate since he had taken, leave of Ghita, and learned that his last request--that of changing his mode of punishment--had been denied.

That was a fearful moment for one like Don Francesco Caraccioli, who had passed a long life in the midst of the scene that surrounded him--illustrious by birth, affluent, honored for his services, and accustomed to respect and deference.

Never had the glorious panorama of the bay appeared more lovely than it did at that instant, when he was about to quit it for ever, by a violent and disgraceful death.

From the purple mountains--the cerulean void above him--the blue waters over which he seemed already to be suspended--and the basking shores, rich in their towns, villas, and vines, his eye turned toward the world of ships, each alive with its masses of living men.