"You'll go there anyway. The question is whether you will go sooner or later. If you tell me what you know, the devils will have to wait for you; if you keep it to yourself, you'll have to go at once. Speak at once or die."
"You'll surely give me the medicine?"
"Yes, there you have it now. While you were speaking, I dropped it into your mouth. I carry it with me always in the stone of my ring. See how green it is, gleaming in the darkness; if I should give you all of it, you would live a hundred years longer."
The poor fellow in the agony of death told all. When he spoke of the chamber of the dead, and of the cavern of treasure, Idalia was convinced that he spoke the truth. No one who had not been there and seen them could know of these places.
"Good," she said, "now take this. Go home to Tepla to your daughter, and say nothing of what you know."
But what the beautiful lady really gave Master Mathias was anything but an antidote; it was a still more active poison, so there should be no time for him to communicate his secret to a third.
When Master Mathias had dragged himself to Tepla to his daughter's house, his tongue hardly moved in his throat, and he could only stammer: "Father Peter—walled in—under-ground—with treasures—in Mitosin—still alive—I am undone." More he could not say; by the time the priest came, he was already dead.
Idalia was left alone with the secret she had extorted. Suddenly her old passion blazed up again to its full height like a column of fire. Her beloved was still alive; he was only buried, walled in deep underground,—abandoned by God and man, left to the company of the corpses, with no sound save those of the silent night; robbed of his loved one, betrayed in despair, with nobody to expect but grim death. What if somebody should go down to him in this frightful grave, and should look at him through that small opening; would not such a countenance seem like that of an angel looking down from Heaven? Would he not look upon her as a goddess who should bring him up from the depths of the grave into God's world again? Would it be possible for him not to yield to the force of that love which opens graves even, and will not leave him to God or the devil?
She did not hesitate long, but threw her black cloak around her shoulders, placed a dagger and a sword at her belt, and looked for a strong axe: "It will be convenient," she thought, "to break through the heavy walls." She lighted her lantern, and stole out of the castle.