"Lent? You told me yourself that he had given them to you."

"For my life-time, perhaps! Such heirlooms revert to the family. I look upon them as a property entrusted to my keeping."

"Give me the ornaments," cried Baluzzi, taking hold quickly.

"Impossible," replied Giulia, paling. "They are my wedding jewels for tomorrow."

"Haha," laughed Baluzzi. "And you do not fear that these sparkling stones should scorch your hair, or change themselves into little snakes, such as play around the heads of the Furies? I have a great undertaking in prospect, besides, I have much money to pay in Russia. I offer you the choice: give me the diadem or I remain. I shall expose you before all the world, and a.s.sert my rights."

Giulia looked once more imploringly at him. Her eye dropped. She was weary of the endless torture.

"Cease! I beseech you, Baluzzi! What shall I say? How excuse myself?"

"Invent a robber. You are inventive enough. A lie, more or less, cannot matter to you, and this is not the worst," added he, scornfully.

"Oh, this torture, this humiliation! Am I not a cowardly woman? Where is my pride, where is my strength? Have you not appeared as one come to warn me, to call to me, 'So far, and no farther! Cease, cease from your reckless game!' And I have not courage to resign, standing before supreme happiness, not the courage of truth, not the courage to speak one single word, to avoid an act of infamous sacrilege! Unworthy struggling, and cheating! That is the greatest humiliation. In open confession, in the lowest abnegation, before universal repudiation, there would still be sublimity! A voice would cry to me, 'You have done rightly,' and above my head I should hear the fluttering of the wings of my life's good genii who have long since forsaken me."

She seemed to be speaking to herself! Eagerly Baluzzi awaited the decisive result of this monologue, at the same time with his eyes devouring the diamonds in Giulia's hand.

"I cannot," cried she suddenly, striking her brow with her clenched hand. "I am too weak, too powerless! Duty's command appears like a horrible spectre that gives me up to boundless misery, while under the spell of criminal silence an ardently longed-for happiness beckons to me. Pity, pity!"

She cried to Heaven for it with clasped hands; Baluzzi answered, as though she had spoken to him.

"None of that! The diamonds! It is my last word!"

"And the price--your everlasting silence!"

"Everlasting? Oh, no! That would be a bad bargain! But, by my honour, for a year, if I live so long, I will not remind you. I will be silent."

"A very sword above my head! And yet a year's felicity! How much happiness does not even a moment contain! Who can destroy what once was ours? And what once it has bought from h.e.l.l can never be reclaimed! And yet--how my heart will beat at every step, at every rustle or rattle of the leaves. No, no, everlasting silence--and the jewels are yours."

"A year--give them, give them, senseless woman!"

He grasped the diamond circle and wrenched it from Giulia's hands after a short indifferent resistance.

"Then farewell, complete your crime! A year--but pray for my life! For I have sworn before I die to be revenged upon you! I leave no other will, save my curse, which shall be upon you."

With these words, and still holding the sparkling ornament high in the air, he disappeared behind the mirror-door, which he pushed back again into the framework of the wall.

Giulia sank upon a seat. She extinguished the lamp and candles.

Sleepless, dreamless, she gazed fixedly through the windows into the night. The moon had set. The grey dawn did her good. Everything faded into uncertainty. A cradle song pa.s.sed through her mind! How terrible the rising day which gave distinct form again to everything which erected the implacable barriers of life!

And on it came with its increasing light, and tinged the tops of the trees. When Beate entered Giulia was still sitting motionlessly in her evening robe in the easy chair.

On descending the winding staircase Baluzzi found Ktchen sitting upon the first steps of the subterranean pa.s.sage beside the dark lantern.

Impatient she had certainly become, and had even crept up the stairs.

She had listened, but understood nothing, for Baluzzi and Giulia spoke in Italian.

In her hand she held something that fluttered and flapped strangely. It was a bat which had whirled around her lantern, and threatened to entangle itself in her hair. When she perceived Baluzzi she started up.

"Well, and she?"

"She will remain this time," said the Italian. "She has bought herself off."

He showed the magnificent diamonds, but they made no impression upon the girl.

"Bought herself off?" said she, as she raised the lantern, let the bat fly away, and stared at Baluzzi in idiotic amazement.

She scrambled down a few steps through the rubbish in the subterranean pa.s.sage.

Then Ktchen stopped suddenly.

"And the marriage will still take place to-morrow?"

"Yes, yes!"

"Most wonderful!"

"Is she not your wife?"

"So the legend says, my child!"

On they clambered over the rubbish. Bats whirred round the lantern.

"To-morrow I must go to the district town," said Baluzzi.

"Leave me here, to-morrow. I will dance in the barn with the peasants at the wedding."

The Italian gave his consent.

They rested themselves in the old watch tower, before commencing the still more toilsome path through the narrow pa.s.sage to the sh.o.r.e of the lake.

"And you could not, would not prevent it. I thought we should drag her with us, perhaps, still in her beautiful clothes, in her satin shoes over the sharp stones, so that the blood would flow over her delicate little feet! Why, you said you would torture her, bind her firmly if she resisted, oh, I had bandages ready that she could not have torn. We should have stowed her away in the boat like a little ma.s.s of misery and had she become unruly, I might have struck her with a dripping oar.

You said this, and what have you done? Nothing--she will be happy, the proud creature--and he, he!"

"Come before dawn breaks," said Baluzzi, urging her to start.

"I must think it over," Ktchen muttered to herself.

A gust of wind sweeping through the loopholes of the Dantziger, extinguished the lantern.

"Follow me," said Ktchen, "I have cat's eyes, and can see in the dark.

Here is the pa.s.sage to the sh.o.r.e. Stoop, you know it is low, but we can feel and grope our way through."

"Horrible darkness, _corpo di bacco_," muttered Baluzzi, while he measured the height of the grotto pa.s.sage with one hand.

"To-morrow it will be brighter here," Ktchen hummed, "but come on, thorns and thistles will not sting you now. I have beheaded and cut them down, I understand how to clear things away, away with the weeds!"