There was not one.of her lovers whom she would have
preferred to her husband if they had been placed
side by side ; but then they were near and he was
distant

Domenico was kept duly informed of all her
doings, but he received her as kindly as ever when
she visited him, and showed no sign that he enter-
tained the slightest suspicion of her conduct On
one occasion, however, he asked her to bring him a
large earthen jar of sulphur-water when next she
came, and this new contribution to his comfort
became a regular one. Graziella did not mind this,
as she had plenty of means of supplying her own
wants now. Thus matters went on for some months,
and Pesce Cane's vases of sulphur-water became a
perfectly familiar sight to every official and inmate
of the prison. Every time his wife came to see him
she brought a full one and took an empty one back
with her. It had happened by mere accident that



DOMENICO 297

the neck of one of these had been broken off, and
Domenico had insisted at the time that it should not
be replaced by a new one, though the large opening
made it difficult for him to drink out of it One day,
when the. term of his imprisonment was almost
finished, Domenico told his wife to drop a large
clasp-knife which he had at home into the broken
jar when it was full of water, and so to introduce it
into the prison. She would not have dared to dis-
obey him, even if she had suspected danger, which
she did not ; so it seemed to her the simplest thing
in the world to do as she was bid.
