"Alas!" said I, "shall we ever be so happy as we have been here?"
"Do you want to stay here?"
"No," I replied, "we should be happy no longer; in presence of danger, we should always be alarmed for each other."
We made preparations for our departure. Joanne passed the day clearing the path by which we were to go. During the night I had a strange experience, upon which I have feared, many times since then, to meditate.
In the midst of a sound sleep I suddenly felt very cold and woke up. I felt for Leoni at my side, but he was not there; his place was cold, and the bedroom door was ajar, admitting a current of ice-cold air. I waited a few moments, but, as Leoni did not return, I began to be alarmed, so I rose and hastily dressed myself. Even then I waited before making up my mind to go out, reluctant to allow myself to be governed by any mere childish anxiety. But he did not appear; an invincible terror seized upon me, and I went out, scantily clad, with the thermometer fifteen degrees below freezing. I was afraid that Leoni might have gone to assist some poor creatures who were lost in the snow, as had happened a few nights before, and I was determined to follow and find him. I called Joanne and his wife; they were sleeping so soundly that they did not hear me. Thereupon, almost frantic with dread, I went to the edge of the little palisaded platform which surrounded the chalet and saw a faint light twinkling on the snow some distance away. I fancied that I recognized the lantern that Leoni carried on his relief expeditions. I ran toward it as rapidly as the snow would allow me, sinking in up to my knees. I tried to call him, but the cold made my teeth chatter, and the wind, which blew in my face, intercepted my voice. At last I came near to the light and could see Leoni distinctly; he was standing on the spot where I had first seen him, holding a spade. I approached still nearer, the snow deadening the sound of my footsteps, and finally stood almost beside him, unseen by him. The light was enclosed in its metal cylinder and shone through a slit on the opposite side from me, directly upon him.
I saw then that he had shovelled away the snow and dug into the earth; he was up to his knees in a hole he had made.
This strange occupation, at such an hour and in such severe weather, gave me an absurd fright. Leoni seemed to be in extraordinary haste. From time to time he glanced uneasily about; I crouched behind a rock for I was terrified by the expression of his face. It seemed to me that he would kill me if he should find me there. All the fanciful, foolish stories I had read, all the strange conjectures I had made concerning his secret, recurred to my mind; I believed that he had come there to dig up a corpse, and I almost fainted. I was somewhat reassured when I saw him, after digging a little longer, take a box from the hole. He scrutinized it closely, looked to see if the lock had been forced, then placed it on the edge of the hole and began to throw back the earth and snow, taking little pains to conceal the traces of his operation.
When I saw that he was ready to return to the house with his box, I was terribly afraid that he would discover my imprudent curiosity, and I fled as swiftly as I could. I made haste to throw my wet clothes into a corner and go back to bed, resolved to pretend to be fast asleep when he returned; but I had plenty of time to recover from my emotion, for it was more than half an hour before he reappeared.
I lost myself in conjectures concerning that mysterious box, which must have been buried on the mountain since our arrival, and was destined to accompany us, either as a talisman of safety or as an instrument of death. It seemed to me unlikely that it contained money; for it was of considerable size and yet Leoni had lifted it with one hand and without apparent effort. Perhaps it contained papers upon which his very existence depended. What impressed me most strongly was the idea that I had seen the box before; but it was impossible for me to remember when or where. This time its shape and color were engraved on my memory as if by a sort of fatal necessity. I had it before my eyes all night, and in my dreams I saw a multitude of strange objects come out of it: sometimes cards cut into curious shapes, sometimes bloody weapons; sometimes flowers, feathers and jewels; and sometimes bones, snakes, bits of gold, iron chains and anklets.
I was very careful not to question Leoni or to let him suspect my discovery. He had often said to me that on the day that I discovered his secret all would be at an end between us; and although he thanked me on his knees for believing blindly in him, he often gave me to understand that the slightest curiosity on my part would be distasteful to him. We started the next morning on mules, and travelled by post from the nearest town all the way to Venice.