"Not married? Do you know what you are saying?"
"What I must say, to loose your bonds as well as mine."
"Good Heavens, what will it avail if you loose my bonds and at the same time cut an artery so that I bleed to death? No, no, you cannot be so cruel. You cannot be in earnest. Omnipotent Father--you did not say it, take back the words. Lord, forgive her, she does not know what she is doing! Oh, take back those words--I will not believe that my wife, my dear wife, can be so wicked!"
"Moderate your expressions! I guarantee my standpoint; ask whom you choose, you will hear that we are not married!"
Freyer rushed up to her and seized her by the shoulders, shaking her as a tempest shakes a young birch-tree. "Not married--do you know then what you are!" He waited vainly for an answer, he seemed fairly crazed. "Shall I tell you, shall I? Then for nine years you were a----"
"Do not finish!" shrieked the countess, wrenching herself with a desperate effort from the terrible embrace and hurling him from her.
"Yes, I will finish, and you deserve that the whole world should hear and point the finger of scorn at you. I ought to shout to all the winds of Heaven that the Countess Wildenau, who is too proud to be called a poor man's wife, was not too proud to be his----"
"Traitor, ungrateful, dishonorable traitor! Is this your return for my love? Take a knife and thrust it into my heart, it would be more seemly than to threaten me with degradation!" She drew herself up to her full height and raised her hand as if to take an oath: "Accursed be the hour I raised you from the dust to my side. Curses on the false humanity which strove to efface the distinctions of rank, curses on the murmur of 'the eternal rights of man' which removes the fetters from brutishness, that it may set its foot upon the neck of culture! It is like the child which opens the door to the whining wolf to be torn to pieces by the brute. Yes, take yourself out of my life, gloomy shadow which I conjured from those seething depths in which ruin is wrought for us--take yourself away, you have no longer any part in me!--Your right is doubly, trebly forfeited, your spell is broken, your strength recoils from the shield of a noble spirit, under whose protection I stand. Dare to lay hands on me again and--you will insult the betrothed bride of the Duke of Barnheim and must account to him."
A cry--a heavy fall--Freyer lay senseless.
The countess timidly stroked the pallid face--a strange memory stole over her--thus he lay prostrate on the ground when he was nailed to the cross. She could not help looking at him again and again: Oh, that all this should be a lie! Those features--that noble brow, on which the majesty of suffering was throned--the very image of the Saviour! Yet only an image, a mask! She looked away, she would gaze no longer, she would not again fall a victim to the old delusion--she would not let herself be softened by the wonderful, delusive face! But what was she to do? If she called her servants, she would be the talk of the whole city on the morrow. She must aid him, try to restore him to consciousness alone. Yet if she now roused him from the merciful stupor, if the grief and rage which had overwhelmed him should break forth again--would he not murder her? Was it strange that she remained so calm in the presence of this thought? A contemptuous indifference to death had taken possession of her. "If he kills me, he has a right to do so."