And I beg to kiss your Excellency's hand, because I am going to the galleys and you will not see me any more.' And then they will put me in, and it will be finished, and I shall always have the satisfaction." Ruggiero produced a fragment of a cigar from his cap and a match from the same safe place and began to smoke, looking at the sea.

People not used to the peculiarities of southern thought would perhaps have been surprised at the desperate simplicity of Ruggiero's statement to himself.

But those who have been long familiar with men of his country and class must all have heard exactly such words uttered more than once in their experience, and will remember that in some cases at least they were not empty threats, which were afterwards very exactly and conscientiously fulfilled by him who uttered them, and who now either wears a green cap at Ponza or Ischia, or is making a fortune in South America, having had the luck to escape as a stowaway on a foreign vessel.
Nor did it strike Ruggiero as at all improbable that Beatrice might some day wish to be rid of the Conte di San Miniato, and might express such a wish, ever so vaguely, within Ruggiero's hearing.

He had the bad taste to judge her by himself, and of course if she really hated her betrothed she would wish him to die.

It was a sin, doubtless, to wish anybody dead, and it was a greater sin to put out one's hands and kill the person in question.