The Corsican Lovers

by Charles Felton Pidgin

“Bless my soul! What a swordsman Victor is! I’ll have him made a captain as soon as I get back to England.”

Before retiring, Bertha went to the Countess’s boudoir to express her sympathy for her great affliction.

“It is a terrible blow to have lost your only son.”

The Countess’s eyes were tearless.

“He has lost more than I have,” she said. “He was never a good son to me. I would have been a good mother to him, but he spurned my advice and cursed me when I reproved him for his folly or his wickedness. His life has been cut short, and so have his sins.”

Manassa had been awakened by the shouts and the firing of the gun which had wounded Victor, and made his way to the reception room. He knelt beside the body of Julien, alternately weeping for the dead Batistelli and cursing the Della Coscias.

Pascal reasoned that Victor had not escaped from the castle, but had been taken by Vivienne to some hiding-place within. Bidding the Death Brothers follow him, he searched every nook and corner of room after room, without success, until only one remained—the Hall of Mirrors.

At the top of the large square tower of Batistelli Castle was the dungeon chamber mentioned in the letter left by Vivienne’s father. That letter, together with the instructions for opening the dungeon door, had been given to Vivienne that evening by Clarine. They were too precious to be trusted even to the guardianship of lock and key, and Vivienne had concealed them in the bosom of her dress.

In front of the dungeon chamber was the Hall of Mirrors, so called because the four sides were covered by large mirrors which extended from floor to ceiling. One unacquainted with the fact would never have imagined that the four mirrors, covering the walls in which was the door leading to the dungeon chamber, were hinged. When these four mirrors, which opened like doors, were thrown back, a new surprise greeted the eye. Upon the wall was painted a picture—the subject being the Garden of Eden. In the foreground stood Adam and Eve, while a short distance from them was a tree, among the leaves of which the body of a serpent could be seen.

On this fatal night, the mirrors concealing the dungeon door were closed, as they had been for a score of years, at least. How often Conrad Batistelli had visited it during his lifetime, no one knew. But, some twenty years before, Clarine had told Manassa that she had seen the master coming down the long flight of stone steps that led to the Hall of Mirrors. After making him promise not to reveal what she should say, she told him that the master’s face was white as a sheet; that he had sent her for some wine, and that when she went into his room an hour later, the bottle was empty.