Again he gave utterance to the frenzied joy of his soul in a loud wild laugh, that burst fearfully upon the midnight air.
“Albertine spare me, spare me! Take not my life.”
“Spare thee? and yon pale form waving me onward? spare thee? wretch, I tell thee all nature is celebrating thy doom! The moon is sinking below the horizon, and the stars gleam through the gathering pall of darkness like funeral fires! Spare thee!”
“Ha! whence come those shouts! I may yet be saved!”
“Thou mayst be saved—ha—ha—ha! It gives me joy to drag thee o’er this steep, craving and hoping for life, to thy latest grasp! Look around Urbano, Duke of Florence, look around and behold the fair and beautiful earth, scene of thy crimes—nay, nay THY CRIME—behold the earth for the last time!”
It was a weird and awful scene.
The dizzy height of the platform rock, the vast azure with its boundless horizon, all beaming with the grandeur of the stars, the massive hills sweeping around the mountain-lake, darkening the clear waters with their midnight shadow, the pile of rocks uprising beyond the darkness of the unfathomable abyss, the silence and the awe that rested upon the hour, broken by the sound of far-off shouts, while on the very verge of the eastern sky, bloody and red, the full-orbed moon was sinking slowly down, casting a dim and lurid light over mountain and stream, convent and plain—all formed a scene of dark and fearful interest.
The Universe, awful and vast, seemed to hold a strange sympathy with the Revenge of Albertine the Monk, the stars gave their solemn light to the scene, and the blood-red moon lit up the funeral pile of the Doomed.
“I gaze around, ’tis an awful scene. And thou, thou wilt spare me, good Albertine?”
“As thou didst spare thy victim, when her voice rung in thy ears of stone, shrieking for pity!” The response came hissing through the clenched teeth of Albertine! “Betrayer, I again tell thee all nature is celebrating thy doom! The moon is sinking below the horizon, and the stars gleam through the gathering pall of darkness like funeral fires!”