Lorenza is killed as a human sacrifice

Lorenza is killed as a human sacrifice during the final gathering at the Conservatoire. She moves to shield Belbo from the people calling for his death, but Pierre attacks her; her death is then proclaimed as the sacrifice the gathering demands. The killing exposes the ritual’s collapse into real violence and comes immediately before Belbo is hanged by the Pendulum.

Intervention at the Gallows

As the crowd turns against Belbo, Lorenza breaks free of the giants holding her and stands at the foot of the gallows with her arms open, trying to stop the gathering. She protests that the people are acting irrationally and that they cannot go through with it. Her action makes her the one person in this moment who directly opposes the threatened killing rather than accepting the ritual’s logic.

Aglie, who has been withdrawing, pauses and runs toward Lorenza to restrain her. Pierre then rushes at her with a dagger. The narrator’s view is blocked during the attack; when he sees Lorenza again, she is lying at Belbo’s feet. The account establishes that she has been killed without describing the attack itself.

The Sacrifice and Its Aftermath

Pierre raises the blade and declares that the human sacrifice has taken place, then calls out to the assembled crowd. His announcement turns Lorenza’s death into the ritual’s claimed fulfillment. Bramanti kneels beside her body and speaks as if confronting a force that is choking, pinning, and stabbing him, while the crowd presses into the ritual space. Garamond’s appeal for manners is heard amid the disorder, an incongruous remnant of ordinary social conduct inside the escalating violence.

The crowd’s movement destabilizes the scene around Belbo. Someone, whom the narrator thinks may be Ardenti, is thrown against the table; it slips away from beneath Belbo, and the Pendulum begins to swing rapidly. Its wire tightens around Belbo’s neck and lifts him into the air. Lorenza’s death therefore does not save Belbo: it precedes the further violence that kills him.

Significance

Lorenza’s intervention is a brief refusal to let the gathering reduce Belbo to an object of sacrifice. The crowd’s ritual language absorbs her death almost at once, as Pierre presents it as the expected offering. The contrast between her effort to stop the killing and the group’s acceptance of it gives the scene its central reversal: the person who acts to prevent a sacrifice becomes its victim, while the ceremony continues toward Belbo’s death.