"You tell me that the grave, in closing over the object of my love, severed the tie between him and me forever—that death pronounced a divorce which gave me liberty to form another attachment. You know not woman's love to say so. It is impossible, when once ignited, to quench it entirely. It may be unseen, the ashes may be cold; but a spark certainly slumbers beneath them, and will never, never die! Oh, your highness, let me entreat you to select some worthier object than myself upon which to lavish your affections! I can never be yours!"
The man read this to the end. When he had finished, there was a smile of mockery upon his face; but a spasmodic shudder which convulsed his frame evinced the pain which it was meant to hide. How we learn to cheat ourselves by playing the hypocrite to others! The letter fell from his grasp to the floor. His head assumed its old position on his hand, and he gazed on vacancy. He remained in this posture so long that the candles one by one flickered and went out, not even perceiving, so great was his abstraction, the glare they gave just before they expired. The large gothic window immediately opposite to where he sat was open, and the air grew cooler and cooler each moment. It seemed, however, as if there were no stars in the sky—all was darkness. Suddenly, a terrific flash of lightning illumined earth and heaven, and cast a strong ruddy glare upon every object in the apartment. A tremendous peal of thunder followed, and the man started to his feet and advanced to the window. The rain was now coming down in large drops, and flash after flash of lightning, and peal after peal of thunder followed each other with astounding rapidity. The wind, which had lain motionless and dead previous to the beginning of the storm, now at one moment went rushing by with extreme violence, and the next sank into a low moan that was awful enough to blanch the cheek and palsy the heart of the stoutest. It was like the wailing voice of a God sorrowing over the sins of man, or the spirit of earth singing a dirge over vanished time.
The tenant of the chamber stood with folded arms, regardless of the fierce gusts that ever and anon dashed the heavy rain-drops in his face, and the ghastly blue tint cast upon his countenance by the lightning made him look unearthly enough to be the arbiter of the dreadful contest then raging between the shrieking storm fiends. His eye grew brighter and more glistening. There seemed a sympathy between the unchained elements in their rage and his own proud spirit. His form dilated, and he seemed to look with a strange delight upon the swaying trees bending beneath the terrific blasts of wind, and to list to the crashing thunder with a fierce joy. A magnificent oak, which had resisted every attempt of the tempest to more than shake its smaller limbs, was suddenly torn up by the very roots, and, with a rushing noise, fell to the ground. The very earth seemed to groan as it fell.
"Thus would I die," exclaimed the looker on, exultingly—"thus would I die! Amid a world's agonizing throes, when the mountains seem to bend their scathed tops, and the ocean roars its submission to the storm."
As he spoke, he advanced, heedless of the elements, through the casement, and stood upon the extreme edge of the battlemented parapet. A shrill, mocking laugh greeted his concluding words, and a voice, that seemed to his excited imagination preternaturally hollow, exclaimed—
"And die thus you shall!"
For a moment he stood perfectly paralyzed; but a heavy hand was laid upon his shoulder, and he turned to meet the glare of two eyes that shone as if lit with fire from hell. The person from whom the glance proceeded held in a threatening position a long, keen-looking dagger, and the blade gleamed brightly in the electric light with which a sudden flash of lightning illumined the scene. The man who had a moment before looked defiantly upon the wrathy heavens shrank from the danger which now threatened him from a human foe. It was, however, but for a moment. He saw in the implacable countenance of the man who had so strangely come upon him, sufficient evidence of some dark and evil purpose to make him look for mischief. He suspected the existence of a danger that would tax his every energy. He turned upon the intruder a look of inquiry, firm and proud, and somewhat rebuking in its aspect. The next moment, however, recollecting that, in the intervals between the flashes, all was invisible, he put the question audibly, which before he had mutely expressed. A tremendous peal of thunder drowned the words in its frightful reverberations, and the lightning that followed showed him the arm of his foe raised to strike. Even as the blade touched his breast he caught his adversary's wrist and threw himself upon him. Powerful he found him beyond all expectations, and his cheek turned ghastly pale, for he felt hope deserting him.
The struggle was terrible; a look of vengeful despair sat on the beaded brow of one, and deep, dark, unmitigable hate gleamed in the strained eyeballs of the other. The assailed man chafed like a maimed lion in the hunter's toils, and his efforts bore that character of ruthless savageness which is the consequence of hopeless fear—of rayless despair. The other, in the proud consciousness of tried strength, dashed his dagger into the bosom of the clouded chaos that formed the atmosphere in which they fought, and, by the exertion of resistless bodily power, bore his victim back towards the verge of the parapet. Too pale to seem human, like the animated statues of two contending gladiators, they rocked to and fro on its extremity. A momentary strife ensued, in which the muscles of each seemed cracking with the might of their exertions. For a single instant, the assailant seemed to give way, and the heart of his victim beat with a hope that intensity made an agony; but the relaxation was but the prelude to a more violent effort. Again they were upon the verge of the battlement—they balanced upon the edge—and then sank into the darkness. A wild, sardonic laugh, and a cry of agony that seemed to freeze the very elements and hush their destructive howl into silence, went up to heaven, succeeded by a dull, heavy sound that announced the departure of two souls to judgment.
The next day the patrol discovered, beneath the postern that opened upon the castle fosse, two mangled bodies, quite dead. The one was the Prince Carlos, Regent of Spain, and the other the Count Carlo Zanotti.