"What, endanger my life for the love of a woman?"
"For such a one as Cecily; and I tell you candidly I would do the same thing again, for the same hopes as then led me on."
"By all the devils in hell," cried Polidori, in utter amazement, "he is bewitched!"
"Hearken to me," resumed the notary, in a low, calm tone, occasionally rendered more energetic by the bursts of uncontrollable despair which possessed his mind. "Listen! You know how much I love gold, as well as all I have ventured to acquire it. To count over in my thoughts the sums I possessed, to see them doubled by my avarice, to know myself master of immense wealth, was at once my joy, my happiness; to possess, not for the sake of expending or enjoying, but to hoard, to gloat over, was my life, my delight. A month ago, had I been told to choose between my fortune and my head, I should certainly have sacrificed the latter to save the former."
"But what would be the use of possessing all this wealth, if you must die?"
"The ecstasy of dying in the consciousness of its possession; to enjoy till the last moment the dear delightful feeling of being the owner of those riches for which you have braved everything, privations, disgrace, infamy, the scaffold itself, to be able to say, even as you lay your head on the fatal block,'Those vast treasures are mine!' Oh, death is far sweeter than to endure the living agonies I suffer at seeing the riches accumulated with so much pain, difficulties, and dangers torn from me! Dreadful, dreadful! 'Tis not dying daily, but each minute in the day; and this dreadful state of misery may be protracted for years! Oh, how greatly should I prefer being struck down by that sudden and rapid death that carries you off ere one fragment of your beloved riches is taken from you! For still, with your dying breath, you might sigh forth, 'Those treasures are mine,—all, all mine! None but me can or dare approach them!'"
Polidori gazed on his accomplice with profound astonishment. "I do not understand you," said he, at last; "if such be the case, why have you obeyed the commands of him whose denunciation of you would bring you to a scaffold? Why, if life be so horrible to you, have you chosen to accept it at his hands, and pay the heavy price you are doing for it?"
"Because," answered the notary, in a voice that sunk so low as to be scarcely audible, "because death brings forgetfulness—annihilation—and then, too, Cecily—"
"What!" said Polidori, "do you still hope?"
"No," said the notary, "I possess—"