"Shall I tell you what I think, Conrad? Well, the woman he showed us, the one asleep, wasn't that one at all. Was she even alive? Oh, the old wizard is capable of anything! He'll have modelled a figure, a wax doll, and given it her likeness."
"You're mad. Get on!"
"I'm not mad. That woman was not alive. The one who died on the tree is properly dead. And you'll find her again up there, I warrant you. Miracles, yes, but not such a miracle as that!"
Having left their lantern behind them, the three accomplices kept bumping against the wall and the upright stones. Their footsteps echoed from vault to vault. Conrad never ceased grumbling:
"I warned you . . . . We ought to have broken his head."
Otto, out of breath with walking, said nothing.
Thus, groping their way, they reached the lobby which preceded the entrance-crypt; and they were not a little surprised to find that this first hall was dark, though the passage which they had dug in the upper part, under the roots of the dead oak, ought to have given a certain amount of light.
"That's funny," said Conrad.
"Pooh!" said Otto. "We've only got to find the ladder hooked to the wall. Here, I have it . . . here's a step . . . and the next . . . ."
He climbed the rungs, but was pulled up almost at once: