“I would look upon her, there—in her prison,” said the cripple, with an expression that denoted a malicious eagerness to gloat upon his victim.
The soldiers interchanged glances with one another, as if they doubted whether such a permission ought to be allowed to the witchfinder.
“Ah, bah!” said Hans. “It is not he that will aid her to escape. Let him pass. They’ll make a fine sport with one another, the witchfinder and the witch—dog and cat. Zist, zist!” continued the young soldier, laughing and making a movement and a sound as if setting on the two above-mentioned animals to worry each other.
“Take care,” said his more scrupulous companion. “Jest not with such awful work. Who knows but it may be blasphemy; and what would Father Peter say?”
The two sentinels continued their pacing up and down, but still at some distance from the prison doorway, in order, as Hans’s companion expressed it, “to keep as much as possible out of the devil’s clutches;” while Black Claus approached the grating of the door.
As the witchfinder peered, with knitted brow, through the bars of the grating, it seemed to him at first, so complete was the darkness within, as though the cell was tenantless; and his first movement was to turn, in order to warn the guards of the escape of their prisoner. But as he again strained his eyes, he became at last aware of the existence of a dark form upon the floor of the cell; and as by degrees his sight became more able to penetrate the obscurity within, he began plainly to perceive the form of the miserable woman, crouched on her knees upon the damp slimy pavement of the wretched hole. She was already dressed in the sackcloth robe of the penitents condemned to the stake, and her poor grey hairs were without covering. So motionless was her form that for a moment the witchfinder thought she was dead, and had fallen together in the position in which she had knelt down; and the thought was like a knife in his revengeful heart, that she might thus have escaped the tortures prepared for her, and thwarted the gratification of his insane and hideous longings. A second thought suggested to him that she was sleeping. But this conjecture was scarcely less agonizing to him than the former. That she, the sorceress, should sleep and be at rest, whilst he, her victim, could find no sleep, no rest, no peace, body or mind, was more than his bitter spirit could bear. He shook the bars of the door with violence, and called aloud, “Magdalena!”
“Is my hour already come?” said the wretched woman, raising her head so immediately as to show how far sleep was from her eyelids.
“No, thou hast got an hour to enjoy the torments of thy own despair,” laughed the witchfinder, with bitter irony.
“Let me, then, be left in peace, and my last prayers be undisturbed,” said Magdalena.
“In order that thou mayst pray to the devil thou servest to deliver thee!” pursued Black Claus, with another mocking laugh. “Ay—pray—pray; but it will be in vain. He is an arch-deceiver, the fiend, thy master. He promises and fulfils not. He offers tempting wages to those who sell to him their souls, and then deserts his servants in the hour of trouble. So prayed all the filthy hags who sat there before thee, Magdalena; but they prayed in vain.”