"For what?" asked the adventurer.
"Nay, but surely you know?"
"Aha! of course!" said he smiling. "You mean you will only have to wait another week for me to cease to be your husband under a mask and become your real, true husband, eh? That is the end of all your thoughts, eh?"
"Yes, yes!" said the girl, but she thought within herself: "I shall only have to wait a week to give up your masked head into the hands of the hangman!"
So Fatia Negra unsuspiciously rocked the girl up and down on his knee and reflected complacently: "Girls are made in order that they may believe the lies which men choose to tell them."
But Anicza was a Wallachian girl and Wallachian girls are jealous, revengeful and artful.
That Saturday had arrived.
Seven hundred torches lit up the Lucsia Grotto. In between, from out of the corners of the cavern Bengal lights burst forth from time to time flooding for a few moments the whole of that gloomy palace with green, blue, white and rose-coloured flames to which the red flame of the pitch-torches with their black smoke formed a spectral contrast.
The great company of coiners had arranged for the last evening before their separation a sumptuous feast in this subterranean hall. The floor was strewn with white sand and all round about tents were erected in which roast and baked meats were piled up into veritable hillocks on broad beech-wood dishes. In order to show the wealth at their command an ox was roasting whole on a flaming fire, revolving as it roasted, while two men, one on each side, basted it well with bacon fat held on iron forks. Close behind it was a gigantic vat of wine, everybody was free to drink out of it as much as he chose. Right in front of the smithy, too, was another gigantic vat holding about fifty firkins, filled to the brim with the finest eau de vié. A couple of young fellows lolled in front of the vat; they were already too lazy to dip their glasses into the fluid, they sucked it in from the brim of the vat itself.