(“What then? What then?”)
“Then the assistants, doubting their own wisdom, but not that of the man who had been their master, obeyed, and reopened the five deep-seated wounds which were just beginning to heal. And again, as Fate would have it—”
(Ah, Fate! The ghoul, the vampire Fate! She who has pursued me since my birth! She who has caught us and crushed us all in her torturing grip, splintering us like frail glass bubbles in her hand! Now she had entered the sick room of Paul Kamarowsky, had brooded over his bedside, and in fiendish pleasantry had scourged the old surgeon's brain with madness, whipping it to frenzy as a child whips a top, guiding his hand to tear the injured body and reopen the fast-healing wounds.)
“As Fate would have it, the old surgeon gave other and still more dreadful orders. Ah, holy Virgin! how shall the horror be told?... When the bewildered assistants, aghast at what they had done, laid the sufferer back on his pillows, the slaying had been accomplished.”
(“The slaying had been accomplished!”)
“With his last breath he called upon your name.”
(“With his last breath he called upon my name!”)
THE PENITENTIARY AT TRANI