Midnight was past, when something rustled at the half-open door, and Barbara came in with a little basket. "I am to tell you the story of our woes," said she: "and I must believe that you will sit unmoved at the recital; that you are waiting for me but to satisfy your curiosity; that you will now, as you did formerly, retire within your cold selfishness, while our hearts are breaking. But look you here! Thus, on that happy evening, did I bring you the bottle of champagne; thus did I place the three glasses on the table: and as you then began, with soft nursery tales, to cozen us and lull us asleep; so will I now with stern truths instruct you and keep you waking."
Wilhelm knew not what to say, when the old woman, in fact, let go the cork, and filled the three glasses to the brim.
"Drink!" cried she, having emptied at a draught her foaming glass. "Drink, ere the spirit of it pass! This third glass shall froth away untasted to the memory of my unhappy Mariana. How red were her lips when she then drank your health! Ah, and now forever pale and cold!"
"Sibyl! Fury!" cried Wilhelm, springing up, and striking the table with his fist, "what evil spirit possesses thee and drives thee? For what dost thou take me, that thou thinkest the simplest narrative of Mariana's death and sorrows will not harrow me enough, but usest these hellish arts to sharpen my torment? If thy insatiable greediness is such, that thou must revel at the funeral-table, drink and speak! I have loathed thee from of old; and I cannot reckon Mariana guiltless while I even look upon thee, her companion."
"Softly, mein Herr!" replied the crone: "you shall not ruffle me. Your debts to us are deep and dark: the railing of a debtor does not anger one. But you are right: the simplest narrative will punish you sufficiently. Hear, then, the struggle and the victory of Mariana striving to continue yours."
"Continue mine?" cried Wilhelm: "what fable dost thou mean to tell me?"
"Interrupt me not," said she; "hear me, and then give what belief you list: to me it is all one. Did you not, the last night you were with us, find a letter in the room, and take it with you?"
"I found the letter after I had taken it with me: it was lying in the neckerchief, which, in the warmth of my love, I had seized and carried off."
"What did the sheet contain?"
"The expectation of an angry lover to be better treated on the next than he had been on the preceding evening. And that you kept your word to him, I need not be told; for I saw him with my own eyes gliding from your house before daybreak."