"Had I a mountain of gold to give you—"
"Gold?—fool!—what is gold to me? Listen. Waylaid by my companions last night, the dog you call your comrade was dashed from his horse by their clubs. He fought bravely, and with his sabre laid open my head: my own blood blinded me. Ha! a moment, and my hand was on his throat—my acciaro at his breast—yet I spared him."
"Heaven will reward you"——
"Ha—ha! A sudden death suited not my purpose or my hate. Slow, consuming, diabolical mental tortures were what I wanted: and what think you we did?" I was breathless; I could not ask, but Giosué continued:
"Bound with cords, he was borne to a ruined vault among the lonely mountains yonder; there amid stinging adders, hissing vipers, bloated toads, and voracious polecats, we flung him down, tied hand and foot, stunned and bleeding. Then closing the aperture, we piled up earth and stones and rocks against it. There let him perish! unseen, unknown, unheard. May never an ave be said over his bones, and may a curse blight, haunt, and blast, to all futurity, the spot where they lie." He paused for a moment, and then continued more slowly and energetically.
"To laugh to scorn the terror of death was the glory of the Greek and the Roman; and I will show thee, Signor Inglese, that Giosué of Montecino can despise it, as nobly as his classic fathers may have done in the days of old." He raised aloft a long bright poniard, which he suddenly drew forth from his sleeve.
"Madman!—desperado!" I exclaimed; "hold, for the sake of mercy! A word—a word—I will give you a thousand ducats! life! all! anything! but say where you have imprisoned my friend?—for Heaven's sake say!"
"Never!" said he, with a triumphant scowl—-"never: let him perish with myself. Love for Dianora led me to destroy her; and love for her still, teaches me that to survive would be the foulest and basest cowardice!"
He struck the stiletto to his heart, and fell dead at my feet.
I was horror-stricken: not by the suicide of the assassin, but by the revelation he had had just made. Of its truth I could not entertain a doubt, The situation of the unfortunate Lascelles, pinioned, wounded, and entombed alive, to endure all the protracted agonies of death by starvation, rushed vividly upon my mind, and overwhelmed me with rage and mortification. I explained to my soldiers the terrible confession of the fierce Giosué, and their emotions were not much short of my own. We endured tantalization in its bitterest sense. What would I not have given that the convulsed corpse of the vindictive Montecino were yet endued with life. But, alas! the ruffian had perished in his villainy with the important secret undisclosed, and the horrible fate of my friend could not be averted.