The higher rising moon outlined with huge angles of light and shadow the marble palaces, which stood out in strong relief against a transparent background and the Tiber, wherein her reflections were lengthened into a glittering column, was frosted with silvery ripples.
At last they reached the entrance of the groves.
"Be calm!" said Eckhardt's guide. "Let nothing that you may see or hear draw you from the path of caution. Think that, whatever you may suffer, there are others who may suffer more! Silence! No questions now! Remember—here are only foes!"
The harper spoke with a certain harsh impatience, as if he were himself suffering under a great nervous strain, and Eckhardt, observing this, made no effort to engage him in conversation, aside from promising to be guided by his counsel. He felt ill at ease, however, as one entering a labyrinth from whose intricate maze he relies only on the firm guidance of a friend to release him.
They now entered the vast garden, fraught with so many fatal memories. At the end of the avenue there appeared the well-remembered pavilion, and, avoiding the main entrance, the harper guided Eckhardt through a narrow corridor into the great hall.
A faint mist seemed to cloud the circle of seats and the high-pitched voices of the revellers seemed lost in infinite distance. In no mood to note particulars, Eckhardt's gaze penetrated the dizzy glare, in which ever new zones of light seemed to uprear themselves, leaping from wall to wall like sparkling cascades. As in the throes of a terrible nightmare he stood riveted to the spot, for at that very moment his eyes encountered a picture which froze the very life-blood in his veins.
In the background, revealed by the parting draperies there stood, leaning against one of the rose-marble columns, the image of Ginevra. Her robe of crimson fell in two superb folds from the peaks of her bosom to her feet. The marble pallor of her face formed a striking contrast to the consuming fire of her eyes, which seemed to rove anxiously, restlessly over the diminished circle of her guests. The most execrable villain of them all,—Benilo,—had at her hands met his long-deferred doom. Those on whom she had chiefly relied for the realization of her strange ambition now swung from the gibbets on Monte Malo,—their executioner Eckhardt. Strange irony of fate! From those remaining, who polluted the hall with their noisome presence, she had nothing to hope, nothing to fear.
And this then was the end!
It required Hezilo's almost superhuman efforts to restrain Eckhardt from committing a deed disastrous in its remotest consequences to himself and their common purpose. For in the contemplation of the woman who had wrecked his life, a tide of such measureless despair swept through Eckhardt's heart, that every thought, every desire was drowned in the mad longing to visit instant retribution on the woman's guilty head and also to close his own account with life. But the mood did not endure. A strange delirium seized him; the woman's siren-beauty entranced and intoxicated him like the subtle perfume of some rare exotic; mingled love and hate surged up in his heart; he dared not trust himself, for even though he resented, he could not resist the fatal spell of former days. The absence of Benilo, of whose doom he was ignorant, inspired the harper with dire misgivings. After peering with ill-concealed apprehension through the shadowy vistas of remote galleries, he at last whispered to Eckhardt, to follow him, and they were entering a dimly lighted corridor, leading into the fateful Grotto, which Eckhardt had visited on that well-remembered night, when a terrific event arrested their steps, and caused them to remain rooted to the spot.
A blinding, circular sweep of lightning blazed through the windows of the pavilion, illumining it from end to end with a brilliant blue glare, accompanied by a deafening crash and terrific peal of thunder which shook the very earth beneath. A flash of time,—an instant of black, horrid eclipse,—then, with an appalling roar, as of the splitting of huge rocks, the murky gloom was rent, devoured and swept away by the sudden bursting forth of fire. From twenty different parts of the great hall it seemed at once to spring aloft in spiral coils. With a wild cry of terror those of the revellers who had not outright been struck dead by the fiery bolt, rushed towards the doors, clambering in frenzied fear over the dead, trampling on the scorched disfigured faces of the dancing girls, on whose graceful pantomime they had feasted their eyes so short a time ago.