“What is that?” said Christian, seizing him by the arm. “Is it here that they torture people?”
Christian’s appearance was certainly rather formidable, especially as he had laid his hand upon his knife. The illustrious geologist started up in great terror, crying:
“What is the matter? Whom do you want? Whom are you speaking of?”
“The baron’s apartment?” said the young man laconically, and with such a tone of authority that even Stangstadius did not venture to discuss the matter further.
“That way!” he said, pointing to the left. Having thus replied, he returned to his reading, very glad to see Christian withdraw, and saying to himself that the baron had strange bandits in his service, and that you met people in his rooms whom you would not care to encounter in the middle of a wood.
Christian crossed another room, and came to a door that was fastened. He forced it open with one violent thrust. He felt, at that moment, as if he could have broken down the gates of hell.
A gloomy spectacle was presented to his view. The baron, in frightful convulsions, was struggling in the agony of death; around him stood Johan, Jacob, the physician, and Pastor Akerstrom, and it was all these four persons could do to keep him from throwing himself out of his bed, and rolling on the floor. They were so entirely absorbed by the patient, who was in a terrible crisis of pain, that they did not hear Christian come in, notwithstanding the noise he made, and did not know of his presence until the dying man, whose face was turned towards him, cried, with an accent of anguish and terror impossible to describe:
“There he is—there he is—there—my brother!”
At the same instant his mouth contracted, his teeth clenched, cutting his tongue, from which the blood spurted. He threw himself back so suddenly and violently, that he escaped from the hands that were trying to hold him, and, with his head thrown back, fell with a terrible crash against the wall of his alcove. He was dead!
While the minister, the physician, and honest Jacob, all of them pale with terror, exchanged the solemn words, “All is over!” Johan, who, during the whole scene, had preserved the most astonishing presence of mind, looked at Christian and recognized him. For the last hour he had been impatiently waiting to learn the result of the attempt at Stollborg, but had not been able to quit the dying man for a single instant. Christian’s presence showed him that it had failed. Johan felt that he was lost. His only safety was in flight, even if he should return at a later day to submit to the new master of Waldemora, or to try and make away with him, with the assistance of the accomplices upon whom he could still rely. Whatever he might determine hereafter, he only thought now of escaping, but this was no longer possible. Christian was pressing too hard upon him; at the threshold of the door he seized him by the collar, and with such a vigorous grasp, that the wretch, pale and suffocated, fell upon his knees, imploring pardon.