The girl, however, impetuously seized her glass and cried exultantly—
“I drink to our love.”
Her voice broke the spell of Banfi’s sobering horror and plunged him into frenzied joy. He caught the slim, supple body of the odalisque in his arms, and pressed her to him with the strength of a boa-constrictor: she was almost stifled in his embrace.
“I know not what you have given me to drink,” stammered Banfi, “but I have lost my head. I am beside myself for love.”
“Then take heed that thou dost not faint. Long hast thou let me languish, and I swore that when next thou camest, to murder thee in thy sleep, so that thou mightest never forsake me more.”
“Oh, do it, do it,” whispered he, and drawing his dagger from his girdle and stretching himself at full length upon the couch, he laid bare his breast with one hand and gave the girl the dagger with the other.
Azrael, with demoniacal ferocity, grasped the dagger by its beryl handle, and threw herself like an armed Fury upon Banfi, who looked at her with a frenzied smile as the sharp edge of the dagger grazed his breast. Then the weapon fell from the hand of the odalisque, and the madly-distended eyes and lips resumed their languishing smile.
“Kill me rather than forsake me,” stammered the girl, embracing Banfi.
“We’ll die together, eh?”
“Yes, yes!”
“Jest not, Azrael. I am ready to do what I say.”
“And I am ready to die,” replied the girl. “Come, I’ll show thee something,”—and with that, drawing aside the carpet, she lifted up a trapdoor, beneath which was visible through the gloom a deeper, lower room, supported by short, stout, arched columns, close beside which a number of large barrels had been placed.
“Yes,” said Banfi, “I know. In that cellar I have hidden the gunpowder which I saved after John Kemeny’s fall.”
“Look at this long nitrous linstock,” said Azrael, drawing up the end of a thick cotton coil out of the cellar; “the barrels are connected with it, and many a time when thou hast been with me have I had the end of this lunt under the cushions of my couch, and held in my couch the torch which was to have kindled it whilst thou wert sleeping with thy head upon my breast, and I lay and listened calmly for the explosion which was to send us both to heaven or to hell.”
“And you were afraid to do it?”
“Not for myself. But I reflected that thou wert not thine own but thy country’s.”
“I belong to no one now.”
“Thy mind was so full of lofty plans. Destiny chose thee to be a Prince among men, a hero among the kings of the earth whose name should fill the pages of history.”
“All that is over now,” cried Banfi, with drunken self-forgetfulness. “I am nobody and nothing. The vault beneath this floor is all that belongs to me. In the world without I am a fugitive and a vagabond.”
“Ha!” hissed Azrael. “Then thy enemies have triumphed over thee?”
“My curse be upon their heads! I had compassion upon them, so I have perished.”
“Is Csaky also among thy persecutors?”
“Yes; he is my most pitiless pursuer.”
“And have all thy faithful friends deserted thee?”
“The fallen has no faithful friends.”
“Thou mightst hire mercenaries and begin the struggle anew. Thou art rich enough.”
“My wealth has gone.”
“Thou mightst beg for help from foreign lands.”
“That would be treason against my country. I have fallen and know what awaits me. I must die. But my enemies shall not triumph at my death as at a festival, or laugh aloud to see me go pale and downcast to my doom. I will die alone.”
“By Allah, thou shalt not die alone! Come, let us fill our glasses. Accursed be the world! we’ll speak of it no more. Come, stifle thy soul in the delirium of joy, and when thy drooping head sinks down upon my breast, I will light the end of this lunt. Thou shalt dream of bliss, of paradise, of kisses ravished and returned; the twofold throbbing of our hearts shall beat the minutes; here below, the stillness of death; there above, the howling of the tempest and of thy foes; and then an earthquaking thunder, rending and scattering the rocks, shall proclaim to heaven and hell that none shall ever find Denis Banfi here on earth again!”
“Azrael, thou art a devil, and I love thee!” cried Banfi, and he clasped the girl in his arms as if she had been a little child.
An hour has passed, and the room has grown dark. The torches are expiring. In the huge vaulted chamber no other light is visible but the red vapour streaming from the orifices of the censer, which gleams like a many-eyed monster, and the burning end of the linstock, lit by Banfi in the midst of his mad orgy, crawling slowly along the room like a fiery serpent.
Naught is to be heard in the deep silence but the sighs of two lovers, and the throbbing of two hearts.
Banfi slept long.
Suddenly he awoke. Pitch-black darkness surrounded him. It was some time before his reeling brain could realize where he was, or why he was there. He felt an icy wind streaming through the room, but it was only after a long interval that he grasped the fact that a door was open somewhere, and that the cold night air was rushing in from outside.
Gradually the scenes of the bygone night and the vows of death came back to his mind, and he felt that he still lived. “The girl has certainly repented of her wish to die,” thought he, and he began to grope about for her. The couch was empty.
“Azrael! Azrael!” he cried repeatedly; but there was no answer.
At last he tottered to his feet, and snatching some embers from the hearth, lit a torch. The solitary, feeble light did not penetrate far, but as far as it extended Azrael was nowhere
