"Ah, yes, Herr Count, if I could talk like that; but I can't."
"And are not all your thoughts already known to Him who reads all hearts? It does not require the absolution of a priest to admit you to His paradise."
But Henry refused to be comforted; his eyes burned with the fire of terror as he moaned again and again:
"I shall be damned! I shall be damned!"
Count Vavel now lost all patience, and, forgetting himself in his anger, exclaimed:
"Henry, if you persist in your foolishness you will deserve damnation. Did not you say so yourself, when you pledged your word to me on that eventful day? Did you not say, 'The wretch who would become a traitor deserves to be damned'?"
With these words he rose and strode toward the door. But ere he reached it his feeling heart got the better of his anger. He turned and walked back to the bed, took the dying man's ice-cold hand in his, and said gently:
"My old comrade—my brave old companion in arms! we must not part in anger. Don't you trust me any more? Listen, my old friend, to what I say to you. You are going on before to arrange quarters; then I will follow. When I arrive at the gates of paradise, my first question to St. Peter will be, 'Is my good old comrade, the honest, virtuous Henry, within?' And should the sainted gatekeeper reply, 'No, he is not here; he is down below,' then I shall say to him, 'I am very much obliged to you, old fellow, for your friendliness, but a paradise from which my old friend Henry is excluded is no place for me. I am going down below to be with him.' That is what I shall say, so help me Heaven!"
The sufferer who stood on the threshold of death strove to smile. He could not return the pressure of his master's hand, but he slowly and with painful effort turned his head so that his cold lips rested against the count's hand.
"Yes—yes," he whispered, and his dim eyes brightened for an instant. "If we were down there together—you and I—we should not have to stop long there; some one with her prayers would very soon win our release."