Again the solemn voices of the monks arose—
“Miserere for him whose death is nigh;
Who from life and its joys must be quickly hurled;
Miserere for one who, a moment more,
Must bid farewell to this dreary world.”
Again his voice arose; his last words for her—
“Leonora—Leonora, a last farewell.”
And again she looked on the ring as she thought, “her love was as great as his.”
Then suddenly she heard footsteps, and she shrank into the shadow of the frowning tower.
The count passed over the very spot from which she had just fled. Then he turned and said to some person unseen by Leonora—
“Thou markest my will; when the day breaks—the scaffold for the son—the pile for the mother.”
Cruel, implacable as he was, he even blushed in the dark night as conscience whispered to him that this scaffold and this pile were but a poor return for his life, twice given him. But he had gone too far to recede; and, with a curse, he cried, “’Twas fatality, and Leonora.” Then he asked himself where she was—where she had hidden herself, and, in an agony of hot, unrestrained passion, he cried out, “Leonora, Leonora, where art thou?”
“She is here!”