“Come, come! You have five hours before you—an immense quantity of time! More than I have needed, sometimes, to prepare a cause a great deal more complicated than your comedies of marionettes! I promise to help you, I tell you, but on condition that you will sit down and eat with me, for I don’t know anything more uncomfortable than to eat alone.”
“You will permit me to be pretty quick, then, won’t you?” said Christian, taking a seat opposite the lawyer, “and not to talk too much, for I shall need all my lungs this evening.”
“Very well, very well,” replied M. Goefle, cutting off for Christian an enormous piece of cold veal—a dish greatly esteemed by the middle classes in Sweden, when properly cooked; “but what were you saying to me just after you came in? What was it you would have discovered, if you had had a little more time?”
Christian related his adventure, and at the close of his story asked M. Goefle if he supposed the lower part of Stollborg contained any old prison.
“Upon my word I don’t know anything about it,” replied the advocate. “It is very possible that there may be some kind of cell in the great mass of masonry here under our feet, and if so, I have no doubt that it has been used as a prison. Our ancestors were not persons of very refined manners, and even yet our nobility have justiciary rights on their own domains.”
“And do you think it equally probable that this sub structure of the donjon may be serving as a prison now?”
“Who knows? What are you thinking of?”
“That possibly some person may be wickedly buried there, a still living victim of one of the thousand dark and secret crimes attributed to the vengeful baron.”
“Really, it would be strange enough to discover that!” said the lawyer, who had suddenly become thoughtful. “Are you sure you were not dreaming when you thought you heard the voice and strange songs?”
“Sure! how can you ask?”