"I go!" muttered the Margrave, rising exhausted from his long agony and staggering down the dark aisles of the church.
Eckhardt's footsteps had no sooner died away in the gloom of the high-vaulted arches, than two shadows emerged from behind a pillar and moved noiselessly down towards the refectory.
In the dim circle of light emanating from the tapers round the altar, they faced each other a moment.
"What ails the Teuton?" muttered the Grand Chamberlain, peering into the muffled countenance of the pseudo-confessor.
"He upbraids the fiend for cheating him of the smile of a corpse," the monk Cyprianus replied with strangely jarring voice.
"And yet you fear I will lose my wager?" sneered the Chamberlain.
The monk shrugged his shoulders.
"They have a proverb in Ferrara: 'He who may not eat a peach, may not smell at it.'"
"And you were not revealed to him, you, for whom he has scoured the very slime of the Tiber?" Benilo queried, ignoring the monk's facetiousness.
"'Tis sad to think, what changes time has wrought," replied the latter with downcast eyes. "Truly it behooves us to think of the end,—the end of time!"