"You would plunge your children into eternal captivity?"
"Tell them that their father lived honourably and died honourably, and teach them to live and die like him."
"Think of your girl, Aranka; your favourite, your dearest child."
"Rather may she fade away than Transylvania be plunged in the flames of war."
"Béldi! drive me not to despair!" cried the wife trembling violently. "I am afraid, horribly afraid, of my dungeon. Twice have I had fever from the close, damp air. There was none to care for me in my sickness; I was calling your name continually, and you were far from me; I saw your image, and was unable to embrace you. Oh, Béldi! I shall die without you! The most terrible form of death—despair—will kill me!"
Béldi knelt down by the side of his wife and embraced and kissed her. The woman fainted in his arms as the Turks entered his prison. Béldi beckoned Kucsuk Pasha to him. A sort of leaden, death-like hue had begun to spread over his face; he could scarce see with whom he was conversing. He laid his swooning wife in the arms of the Pasha, and stammered with barely intelligible words: "I thank you for your good will. Here is my wife—take her—back to her dungeon!"
The Turks, in speechless astonishment, lifted up the fainting woman, and left the dungeon without plaguing Béldi with any more questions.
Béldi stood stonily there as they went out, with open lips and a dull light in his eyes. When the last Turk had gone, and he saw his wife no longer, his head began to nod and droop down, and suddenly he fell prone upon the floor.
Körtövely, the old hound, began sorrowfully, bitterly, to whine.
At that moment Zülfikar entered the dungeon with the poisoned letter.