Fatigue, hunger, emotion, and terror, gradually made her steps more, and more feeble; and feeling every moment as if she was about to fall, she was on the point of imploring aid. A certain pride, however, made her ashamed of abandoning her resolution, and induced her to act courageously. She soon reached the end of her journey, and was made to sit down. Just then she heard a melancholy bell, like the sound of a tom-tom, striking twelve slowly, and at the last stroke the hood was removed from her brow, which was covered with perspiration.
She was at first dazzled by the blaze of many lights immediately in front of her, arranged in cruciform on the wall. As soon as her eyes became used to this transition, she saw that she was in a vast Gothic hall, the vault of which, divided by hanging arches, resembled a deep dungeon or a subterranean chapel. At the foot of this room she saw seven persons, wrapped in red mantles, with their faces covered by livid white masks, making them look like corpses. They sat behind a long black marble table. Before them, at a table of less length was an eighth spectre, clad in black, and masked with white, also seated. On each side of the lateral walls stood a score of men, each of whom was wrapped and veiled with black. Consuelo looked around, and saw behind her other phantoms in black. At each of the two doors there were two others with drawn swords.
Under other circumstances Consuelo would perhaps have said that this melancholy spectacle was but a game—one of those tests to which candidates were subjected in the masonic lodges at Berlin. The freemasons, however, never constituted themselves into a court, and did not attribute to their body the right to drag persons who were not initiated, before their lodges. She was therefore disposed, from all that had preceded this scene, to think it serious and even terrible. She discovered that she trembled visibly, and but for five minutes of intense silence which pervaded the whole assembly, would not have been able to regain her presence of mind and prepare to reply.
The eighth judge at last arose, and made a sign to the two ushers who stood with drawn swords on each side of Consuelo, to bring her to the foot of the tribunal, where she stood erect, in an attitude of calmness and courage, not a little affected.
"Who are you, and what do you ask?" said the man in black rising.
Consuelo for a few moments was stupefied, but regained courage, and said—
"I am Consuelo—a singer by profession—known also as La Zingarella and La Porporina."
"Have you no other name?" said the examiner.
Consuelo hesitated, and then said—
"I can claim another; yet I am bound in honor never to do so."