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was no thoroughfare. One thing he had to fear was that some badly-fastened trap door would give way under his feet and drop him into some underground cell from which he could not escape. And so whenever he touched a piece that sounded hollow he took care to cling to the walls, though he went forward with an ardour that hardly left him time for reflection.
At the same time, as he had neither gone upwards nor downwards, the floor was clearly on the level of the inner courts arranged among the different buildings within the enclosure, and it was possible that the passages ended in the central donjon, perhaps at the foot of the stair case.
Certainly there ought to exist a more direct means of communication between the gate and the central buildings. When the Gertz family had lived there it had not been necessary to enter these interminable passages. A second gate, which faced the gate opposite the first gallery, opened on to the place of arms, in the centre of which rose the keep; but it had been stopped up, and Franz had not been able to see where it had been.
For an hour the young count continued his advance at a venture, listening if he could hear any distant sound, and not daring to shout for La Stilla lest the echoes should carry it to the upper floors of the donjon. He was in no way discouraged, and would go on until strength failed him, or some impassable obstacle compelled him to stop.
But although he took no notice of it, Franz was already nearly exhausted. Since he left Werst he had eaten nothing. He suffered from hunger and thirst. His step was not sure, his legs were failing him. In this warm, humid air his respiration had become irregular, and his heart beat violently.
It was nearly nine o’clock when Franz, putting out his left foot, found no ground to tread upon.
He stooped down and felt there was a step, and then another below it.
It was a staircase.
Did these stairs go down to the foundations of the castle, with no way of exit.?
Franz did not hesitate to go down them, and he counted the steps, which went off obliquely from the passage.
Seventy-seven steps were thus descended to the level of a second passage which led to many gloomy windings.
Franz went along these for half an hour, and, tired out, had just stopped when a luminous point appeared several hundred feet in advance.
Whence came this light? Was it merely a natural phenomenon, the hydrogen of some will-o’-the-wisp that had lighted itself at this depth? Was it a lantern carried by one of the inhabitants of the castle?
“Can it be La Stilla?” murmured Franz. And the thought occurred to him that a light had already appeared as if to show him the way into the castle when he was wandering among the rocks on the Orgall plateau. If it had been La Stilla who had shown this light at one of the windows of the donjon, was it not La Stilla who was now trying to guide him amid the sinuosities of these subterranean passages?
Hardly master of himself, Franz bent down and looked ahead without moving. It was more a diffused effulgence than a luminous point that seemed to fill a sort of vault at the end of the passage.
Franz crawled towards it, for his limbs could scarcely support him, and passing through a narrow entrance he fell on the threshold of a crypt.
This crypt was in a good state of preservation, about twelve feet high, and circular in shape. The arches of the vault sprang from the capitals of eight dwarf columns, and met in a hanging boss, in the centre of which was a glass vase filled with a yellowish light.
Facing the entrance, between two of the columns, was another door which was closed, and the large rounded bolts showed where the outer ironwork of the hinges was fastened.
Franz dragged himself up to this second door and tried to move it.
His efforts were in vain.
Some old furniture was in the crypt; there was a bed, or rather a bench, in old heart-of-oak, on which were a few bedclothes; there was a stool with twisted feet; there was a table fixed to the wall with iron tenons. On the table were a large jug full of water, a dish with a piece of cold venison, a thick piece of bread like a sea-biscuit. In a corner murmured a fountain fed by a narrow stream, the overflow of which passed away at the base of one of the columns.
Did not these arrangements show that some guest was expected in this crypt, or rather a prisoner in this prison? Was this prisoner Franz? and had he been lured by a stratagem into the interior of the castle?
In the trouble of his thoughts Franz had no suspicion of this. Exhausted by want and fatigue, he dashed at the food on the table, quenched his thirst with the contents of the jug, and then fell on the rough bed, where a sleep of a few minutes might recruit his strength.
But when he tried to collect his thoughts it seemed as though they escaped like the water he might try to hold in his hand.
Would he then have to wait for daylight to recommence his search? Had his will so far forsaken him that he was no longer master of his acts?
“No,” said he, “I will not wait! To the donjon! I must reach the donjon to-night.”
Suddenly the light in the vase went out, and the crypt was plunged in complete darkness.
Franz would have risen. He could not do so, and his thoughts went to sleep, or rather stopped suddenly, like the hand of a clock when the spring breaks. It was a strange sleep, or rather an overpowering torpor, an absolute annihilation of being, which did not proceed from the soothing of the mind.
How long the sleep lasted Franz did not know. His watch had run down and did not show the time. But the crypt was again bathed in artificial light.
Franz jumped off the bed, and stepped towards the first door, which was open all the time, then towards the second, which was still closed.
He began to reflect, and found he could not do so without difficulty.
If his body had recovered from the fatigues of the night before, he felt his head empty and heavy,
“How long have I slept?” he asked. “Is it night or is it day?”
Within the crypt nothing had changed, except that the light had been renewed, the food replaced, and the jug filled with clear water.
Some one, then, must have been there while Franz was deep in this overpowering slumber? It was known that he was in the depths of the castle! He was in the power of Baron Rodolphe de Gortz! Was he doomed to have no further communication with his fellow-men?
That was not possible, and, besides, he would escape, for he could do so; he would re-traverse the gallery that led to the gate, he would leave the castle.
Leave? He then remembered that the gate was closed behind him.
Well! He would try to reach the outer wall, and by one of the embrasures he would try to slip down into the ditch. Cost what it might, in an hour he would have escaped from the castle.
But La Stilla? Would he give up reaching her?
Would he go away without rescuing her from Rodolphe de Gortz?
Yes! And what he could not do single-handed he would do with the help of the police, which Rotzko would bring from Karlsburg to the village of Werst. They would rush to the assault of the old stronghold, they would search the castle from top to bottom.
Having come to this determination, he decided to put it into execution without losing an instant.
Franz rose, and was walking towards the passage by which he had come, when he heard a noise behind the other door.
It was certainly the sound of footsteps approaching very slowly.
Franz put his ear against the door and, holding his breath, he listened intently.
The steps seemed to come at regular intervals, as if they were going upstairs. No doubt there was a second staircase which connected the crypt with the interior courts.