After waiting some time in deadly, harrowing suspense, Eckhardt addressed his companion.
"I hate to abase my good sword for such a purpose,—but the coffin shall be opened." And without warning he bounded down into the grave, while Il Gobbo, thinking his last moment at hand, had dropped pick and spade, and stood, more dead than alive, at the foot of the grave.
Picking up the grave digger's spade, Eckhardt dealt the coffin such a terrific blow that he splintered its top to atoms. A second blow completely severed the lid, and it lurched heavily to one side, lodging between the coffin and the earth wall.
The ensuing silence was intense.
The moon, which had risen high in the heavens, illumined with her beams the chasm in which Eckhardt stood, bending over the coffin. What his eyes beheld was too terrible for words to express. Only one tress of dark silken hair had escaped the dread havoc of death, which the open coffin revealed. It was a sight such as would cause the blood to freeze in the veins of the bravest. It was the visible execution of the judgment pronounced in the garden of Eden: "Dust thou art, and to dust thou shall return."
Only one dark silken tress of all that splendour of body and youth!
Eckhardt leaped from the grave and stood aside, leaving it for his companion to give his final instructions to Il Gobbo, the grave digger, and the reward for his night's labour.
As they strode from the churchyard of San Pancrazio, neither spoke. The havoc of death, which Eckhardt's eyes had beheld, the contrast between the image of Ginevra, such as it lived in his memory, and the sight which had met his eyes, had re-opened every wound in his heart. No beam of hope, no thought of heavenly mercy, penetrated the night of his soul. His heart seemed steel-cased and completely walled up. He could not even shed a tear. One hour had worked a dreadful transformation. Silently the Margrave and his companion left the churchyard. Silently they turned toward the city. At the base of Aventine, Benilo parted from Eckhardt, himself more dead than alive, promising to see him on the following day. He dared not trust himself even to ask Eckhardt what he had seen. There would be time enough when his terrible frenzy had subsided.
As Eckhardt continued upon his way, he grew more calm. The feast of Death, which he had dared to break into, while for a time completely stupefying him with its horrors, seemed at least to have brought proof positive, that whoever Ginevra's double, it was not Ginevra returned to earth. There was much in that thought to comfort his soul, and after the fresh air of night had cooled his fevered brow, saner reflections began to gain sway over his whirling brain.
But they did not endure. What he had seen proved nothing. Another body might have been substituted in the coffin. The supposition was monstrous indeed—yet even the wildest surmises seemed justified when thrown in the scales against the fatal likeness of the woman who had drawn him from the altars of Christ, had frustrated his design to become a monk, and had, as he believed, attempted his life. Could he but find the monk who had conducted the last rites! He had searched for him in every cloister and sanctuary in Rome, yet all those of whom he inquired disclaimed all knowledge of his abode. Several times the thought had recurred to Eckhardt of returning to the Groves, to seek a second interview with the woman, and thus for ever to silence his doubts. But a strange dread had assailed and restrained him from the execution. There was something in the woman's eyes he had never seen in Ginevra's, and he felt that he would inevitably succumb, should he ever again stand face to face with her. He almost wished that he had followed Benilo's advice,—that he had refrained from an act prompted by frenzy and despair. Vain regrets! He must find the monk, if he was still in Rome. Though everything and everybody seemed to have conspired against him nothing should bend him from his course.