"Certainly," answered I.
"Has it not then become clear to you," resumed the doctor, "that Francesco entertained a criminal attachment towards the Italian Countess? That it was he who made his entrance secretly into the bridal chamber, and who poniarded the Duke? Victorin, as you know, was the off-spring of that crime. He and Medardus, therefore, are sons of one father. Victorin has vanished from the world, without leaving a trace of his fate. All inquiries after him have been in vain."
"The monk," said I, "hurled him down into the Devil's Abyss, amid the Thuringian mountains. Curses on the delirious fratricide!"
Softly, at the moment after I had pronounced these words, there came on my ears, from underneath the floor whereon we stood, the same measured knocking which I had heard in my dungeon. Whether this were imagination or reality, the effect on my feelings was the same. I could not contend against the horror which now seized me. The physician seemed neither to remark my agitation, nor the mysterious noise.
"What!" said he, "did the monk then confess to you that Victorin also fell by his hand?"
"Yes," answered I. "At least I drew this conclusion from various passages in his confused and broken confessions—connecting them also in my own mind with the sudden disappearance of Victorin. Woe—woe to the relentless fratricide!"
The knocking was now more powerful. There was again a moaning and sobbing. Methought a shrill laughter sounded through the air, and I heard the same stammering voice—"Me-dar-dus—Me-dar-dus!—He—he—he—Help, help!—He—he—he—Help, help!"—I was amazed that the physician took no notice of this, but he quietly resumed.
"An extraordinary degree of mystery seems to rest upon Francesco's appearance at our court. It is highly probable that he also was related to our Prince's house. This much; at least, is certain, that Euphemia, Baroness von F——, was the daughter——"
With a tremendous stroke, so that the bolts and hinges seemed broken into splinters, methought the door flew open, and I heard the voice of the spectre absolutely scream with laughter. I could not bear this any longer. "Ho—ho—ho! Brüd-er-lein!" cried I. "Here am I—Here am I!—Come on—come on quickly, if thou would'st fight with me—Now the owl holds his wedding-feast, and we shall mount to the roof, and contend with each other. There the weather-cock sings aloud, and he who knocks the other down, is king, and may drink blood!"
"How now?" cried the physician, starting up, and seizing me by the arm. "What the devil is all that? You are ill, Mr Leonard, dangerously ill. Away—away with you to bed!"