"You will--"
"I know what I will, but not yet how I will carry it out. That must be left to the impulse of the moment. The past is a fairy tale, a legend, if the proofs be wanting. I will destroy the proofs."
"Beate!"
"Where are they, but upon the little rocky island of Berengar? There they still display the skin of that snake, which Saint Giulo killed; well, I hope that the little viper into which Beate Romani is to be transformed, will succeed with the new saints who keep guard there."
"You are contemplating a crime?"
"I am contemplating the destruction of a great lie, which clings to your life as if with the arms of a polypus. A lie for your heart, but a truth for the world; a vile, shameful truth if I do not--but what matter is that to you? Do not question me too much! What I do, I shall do alone, and because it pleases me. I ask you for the money for my journey--let the rest be my care."
Giulia sat there with folded hands; should she give her consent to a deed which, as she suspected, was directed against law and church!
Yet could she hesitate? Her passion drove her still farther upon the fatal course, and shuddering inwardly, she was obliged to confess to herself that every act of Beate's was less of a sacrilege than that which she now so often firmly and steadily contemplated, and the worst consequences of which her friend sought to avert.
To that first meeting, to that short-lived felicity by which she first emancipated herself from her stern duty, this lawless deed was now, as if forcibly, and ever anew united to unholy consequences.
Giulia wrung her hands in despair.