“I fear, I fear,” murmured the old man, gazing around with an affrighted look; “I fear they,” pointing above, “they will lash me for this! He, he, he! I bade him beware of the spring within the stone-room, and he would not. I cannot turn this bolt, the old man is not strong enough. Ha, ha, here is a torch; Glow-worm has not had a torch in his hand for years! Ho, ho, ho, the noble captain came here to bury the dead, and, ho, ho, ho, he is buried alive!”
CHAPTER THE EIGHTH.
THE FATE OF THE BETRAYER.
SWEETER THAN THE LOVE OF WOMAN, DEARER THAN GLORY TO THE WARRIOR, POWER TO THE PRINCE, OR HEAVEN TO THE DEVOTEE, IS THE CONSUMMATION OF A LONG SOUGHT AND SILENTLY TREASURED REVENGE.
“Where am I?” shrieked the Duke, as he stood upon the platform of the convent tower. “’Tis a hideous dream, ’tis a fearful nightmare! Ha! my brain reels. I’ll gaze no longer down the fearful abyss! Is there none to awake me, none? Horror of horrors! This demon hand will strangle me, closer and tighter it winds around my throat, ah!”
A wild laugh of intense joy came from the chest of the Monk. “I feast upon thy misery,” he cried, “wretch, I banquet upon thy agony! Ha, ha, ha! The glory of this moment I would not barter for all the joys of heaven! Dost thou shiver, dost thou tremble, well thou mayst! Look down, far, far below! Dost see any hope there, what says the whitened precipice? Hath the dark abyss no voice? Look above, canst glean naught from the frown of the tower that is over thy doomed and devoted head? Or mayhap the secret door may afford thee consolation? Speak—thou for whose crime earth hath no word, hell no name, speak that I may feast upon the music of thy quailing voice!”
Tighter he wound his grasp around the throat of the trembling wretch, and with his dark eye flashing with all the frenzy of supernatural revenge, he shook the form of the Duke over the awful abyss.
“Is’t thou, good Albertine? Hold, hold, or I shall fall. ’Tis a fearful steep! Behold, a flock of snow-white sheep are grazing in yon distant vale, they seem but as mice at this fearful height. Thou, thou wilt not harm me, good Albertine?”
“Look, look!—Behold her pale form is floating in the moonlight, her face is wan, and her look is that of despair! Ha! her glazing eyes are fixed upon thee—thee—her BETRAYER! She beckons me over the steep!—I come—I come!”
“Nay, good Albertine, grasp me not so tight!—Bring to mind the days when we were sworn friends—”
“Friends? Doomed man, the memory of former days shall but hurl accumulated torture upon thy head!—Friends?—Ah! like a dream it comes over my mind! I was a peasant boy—thou didst raise me to rank and power, and I have loved ye as brother loves brother. Could my life have served thee, it would have been laid at thy feet. My life thou did’st not take. No! no! But the treasured hope of years, the glowing fancies of a musing boy, the anticipations of happiness that haunted my dreams by night, and lived in my thoughts by day; these—at one fell remorseless blow, thou did’st sweep away. It was upon her grave; the grave of thy victim, that one thought possessed my soul. For years and years have I planned, have I schemed, nay wept, prayed for the fulfilment of that thought. And now it is fulfilled. I have thee in my grasp! Think’st thou a thousand worlds would buy thy craven life? That heaven or hell would tear thee from my hand?”