"How, so long? I am impatient."
"You must restrain your impatience—but we must have the boy settled first, and the count will have been dead a longer time then, and we shall not give so much scandal to the weak-minded fools that were his friends, for it will be dangerous to have so many events happen about the same period."
"You shall act as you think proper—but the first thing to be done will be, to get this cunning doctor quietly out of the way."
"Yes."
"I must contrive to have him seized, and carried to the mines."
"Beneath the tower in which he lives is a trap-door and a vault, from which, by means of another trap and vault, is a long subterranean passage that leads to a door that opens into one end of the mines; near this end live several men whom you must give some reward to, and they will, by concert, seize him, and set him to work."
"And if he will not work?"
"Why, they will scourge him in such a manner, that he would be afraid even of a threat of a repetition of the same treatment."
"That will do. But I think the worthy doctor will split himself with rage and malice, he will be like a caged tiger."
"But he will be denuded of his teeth and claws," replied the countess, smiling "therefore he will have leisure to repent of having threatened his employers."