Theudelinde shut herself up in her bedroom and counted the minutes. She tried to play Patience, but the cards would not come right; her mind was too much disturbed. She took out her Bible, splendidly illustrated by Doré. She looked at all the pictures; she counted the figures of the different men and women upon those two hundred and thirty large plates; then the horses and the camels, till she came to the scenes of murders. Then she tried to pass the time by reading the text. She counted which letter of the alphabet was repeated the most frequently upon one side of the page. For the greater part the letter a was the favorite, e came next, then o, also u; i was the worst represented. This was in the French print. In the Hungarian text e had the majority, then a, o, and i, and, last of all, b and u. But of this she also wearied. Then she sat down to the piano, and tried to calm her agitation by playing dreamy fantasias; neither did this succeed. Her hands trembled, and she could not sustain herself at the instrument, she was so wearied; and as the fatal hour of midnight drew nearer she gave up making efforts to distract her mind, and abandoned herself to thoughts of the impending ghostly tumult. She found herself altogether under the influence of her ancestral spectres, for she was always consumed with ennui until the noise began. Then a sort of fever would come to her; she would undress herself, crawl into bed, draw the coverings over her head until she broke into a perspiration, and then fall into a deep sleep. The next morning, when she awoke, she really believed that she had witnessed the scenes of which she had only dreamed.
This night she drew forth her talisman, the photograph of the abbé, and tried to find some strength by considering it. She placed it before her on the reading-desk and sat gazing at it. Was he really a superior being, at whose command the doors of the castle would fly open, spectres would vanish, and the gates of hell would close upon them? It could not be that such things would happen. The more the night advanced the greater grew her nervous fears. Her heart beat loudly. It was not so much the nightly ghosts that she dreaded, but this new and equally unearthly visitor. What was he? A wizard, an enchanter like Merlin of old, or a saint come to exorcise and banish her tormentors?
The weary lagging hours went by, until at last the pendulum of the old clock began to vibrate, and its iron tongue gave out midnight. The countess counted every stroke. Its vibration had hardly ceased when, punctual to its usual time, the infernal noise began; from the vault below the tones of the mass reached Theudelinde's ears. She was, however, listening for another sound, listening with feverish anxiety to catch a stealthy footfall in the adjoining room, to hear the rattle of a key surreptitiously moving in the lock. Nothing! She came to the door, and, putting her head to the keyhole, strained her ears in vain. All was still. It was now a quarter past midnight; the tumult in the vault below was in full swing—the witches' Sabbath, as it might be called, with its yells, shouts, songs, prayers; it was as if all the devils of hell had given one another rendezvous in the company of the countess's ancestors.
"He will not come," she thought, and trembled in every limb of her fever-stricken body. It was folly to expect it. How could a man accomplish what is only permitted to spirits?
She retired to the alcove and prepared to lie down. At this moment she heard a tap at the door of her sitting-room, and, after a moment, a low voice spoke in firm tones—
"In nomine Domini aperientur portæ fidelium."
It was the signal given by the abbé. Theudelinde gave a shriek; she nearly lost her senses from fright, but gathered herself together with a supreme effort. It was real; no hallucination, no dream! He was at the door, her deliverer. Forward!
The countess ran to the door and opened it. The crisis gave her unusual strength. This might be a trap, and instead of a deliverer she might find herself opposite to a robber or murderer. Under the carpet lay concealed the trap-door; the midnight visitor stood on the very spot. One pressure of the secret spring and down he went into the abyss below. Theudelinde had her foot on the spring as she undid the door.
There stood the abbé before her. No appearance of his clerical calling was to be seen. He wore a long coat, which reached to his feet, and carried neither bell, book, nor candle, wherewith to exorcise the spirits. In his right hand he held a thick stick made of rhinoceros' skin, and in the left a dark lantern.
"Remain where you are," said the countess, in a commanding voice. "Before you set foot in this room you shall tell me how you got here. Was it with the help of God, of man, or of the devil?"