'Noble Emma, the dungeon in which he is chained is no seemly place for gold-embroidered slippers and ermined robes.'
'Less seemly still, then, for an innocent man, if innocent he be,' cried Emma, each syllable sounding like a challenge thrown at a foe. 'Show me the way. I will see myself to the lodgment of all under my roof.'
Then a satisfied light gleamed from Father Pierre's unworldly dark eyes, and his thin, ascetic features relaxed into a smile. 'The Holy Mother reward and sustain thee, my daughter!' he said softly. 'Come then at once!'
Emma followed him; outwardly calm, but in reality deeply moved, and not without terror at thought of entering those terrible dungeons, which, although she had passed her life in castles, had hitherto been known to her only by name.
He led her through winding passages secured by more than one heavy, clangorous portal—the vaulted walls echoing to the creak of their hinges—into the silence and the darkness of the basement.
The chaplain was free to penetrate at will into these halls of suffering and despair in the prosecution of his sacred office, but the warders who guarded the various portals half forgot to make their reverence to the priest, as they stared with open-eyed surprise at the lady, till, on recognising her, they saluted with clumsy haste, and strove to atone for momentary negligence by quick opening of the door which formed their ward.
Emma shuddered as the torch with which Father Pierre had provided himself gleamed on the damp, massive walls. It seemed to her that imprisonment between them would of itself bring death to her, and she marvelled how any human creature should sustain life under such conditions.
'In sooth, noble Emma,' said Father Pierre, as the countess gave expression to this feeling, 'the holy saints have sent thee hither this night, because time grew pressing. A little while, and the man who is the object of thine errand of mercy would be released by a sterner liberator—death. If thou shouldst deem him worthy of his dungeon, he will not need guarding long!'
'Ah!' sighed Emma, with a sharp pang of horror, and instinctively quickening her steps, as if a moment might be fatal.
They had reached a narrow, ponderous door, studded with huge nails. Father Pierre produced a key which he had taken from a warder who stood at the end of the passage. He turned it in the lock, and, drawing back their solid bolts, pushed open the door and entered the cell into which it gave access, the countess following with shrinking steps.