Chapter 32 of Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf returns to bandit-chief Stephano and company’s attempts to rescue Flora and Giulia from the clutches of the sadistic nuns. Their mission is interrupted by the tolling of a bell by “an old nun, who, for some dreadful misdeed committed in her youth, had voluntarily consigned herself to the convent of the Carmelites”. Regaining their composure after hearing this alarm, the band go ahead with chucking the two sadistic nuns who know of their presence (Sister Alba and an unnamed abbess) into a dungeon cell to rot. Manuel, Giulia’s lover, objects to this; but Stephano overrules him.
The alarm turns out to have roused the local sbirri, who get into a fight with the bandits (Piero, a character given a name only in the previous chapter, is killed: “he fell back again, and expired with the name of Carlotta upon his tongue”). Finally, the convent catches fire (apparently due to a lantern dropped in the confusion) and the subterranean chamber collapses, burying all those who failed to escape in time.
Flora heads off to meet her aunt, who agrees to take care of Giulia, and Manuel goes back home. Have these three characters found happy endings now that the sadistic nuns have been dealt with? It seems that way. But the bandit-chief Stephano has matters on his mind — matters concerning a werewolf named Wagner…
Doris V. Sutherland 