And then the president raised a cloth from the table. Under it lay the accusers of Athalie—the bloody night-dress, the box of poisons, and the diary.
Athalie uttered a scream like a mortally wounded animal, and covered her face with both hands, and when she took them away, that face was no longer pale, but fiery red. She had a narrow black ribbon round her neck; she tore it off now with her two hands, and threw it away, as if to bare the lovely neck for the headsman, or perhaps rather to utter more easily what now burst from her.
"Yes, it is true I tried to kill you, and I am only sorry I did not succeed. You have been the curse of my life, you pale-faced ghost! Through you I have incurred eternal damnation. I tried to kill you—I owed it to myself. See now, there was enough poison to send a whole wedding company into eternity; but I longed for your blood. You are not dead, but my thirst is quenched, and I can die now. But before the executioner's ax severs my head from my body, I will give your heart one more stab, from which it will never be healed, and whose torture shall disturb your sweetest embraces. I swear! hear me, oh, God! hear me, ye saints and angels, and devils! all ye in heaven and earth!—be gracious to me only so far as I speak what is true." And the raving woman sunk on her knees, and threw up her hands, calling heaven and earth to witness. "I swear! I swear that this secret—the secret of the hidden door—was only known to one person besides myself, and that one was Michael Timar Levetinczy. The day after he learned this secret from me he disappeared. If any one has told this, then Michael Timar Levetinczy did not die next day! He lives still, and you can look for your first husband's return. So help me God, it is true that Timar lives! He whom we buried in his stead was a thief who had stolen his clothes. And now live on with this stab in your heart."
CHAPTER XII.
THE PENITENT IN "MARIA-NOSTRA."
The court sentenced Athalie to death for attempted murder. The king's mercy commuted this sentence into imprisonment for life in the penitentiary of "Maria-Nostra."
Athalie still lives. Forty years have passed since then, and she must be nearly seventy years old, but her defiant spirit is unbroken; she is obstinate, silent, and unrepentant. When the other prisoners are taken to church on Sundays, she is locked into her cell, because it is feared that she might disturb the devotions of the rest. Once when she was forced to go there, she yelled out to the priest "Liar!" and spat on the altar.
At various times during this period great acts of amnesty have been passed, and on national festivals hundreds of prisoners have been liberated, but this one woman was never recommended to mercy. Those who advised her to repent in order to secure a pardon received the reply, "As soon as I am free I will kill that woman!"
She says it still; but she whom she hates has long fallen into dust, after suffering for many years from that last stab inflicted on her poor sick heart.
After the words "Timar still lives," she never could be happy again: like a cold phantom it overshadowed her joy; her husband's kisses were forever poisoned to her. And when she felt the approach of death, she had herself taken to Levetinczy, that she might not be placed in the tomb where God knows who mouldered away under Timar's name. There she sought out a quiet willow grove on the Danube shore, in the part nearest to where her father, Ali Tschorbadschi, rested at the bottom of the river: as near to the ownerless island as if some secret instinct drew her there. From her grave the island rock was visible.