Adrift in Pacific and Other Great Adventures – 17 Titles in One Volume (Illustrated Edition). Jules Verne
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would have thrown himself on the baron, but his strength failed him, and he fell unconscious at the foot of the stage.
Rodolphe de Gortz did not even notice the young count. He took the box from the table, he rushed from the room down to the first terrace of the donjon, and was running round it to gain the other door when there was the report of a gun.
It was Rotzko who, from the slope of the counterscarp, had just shot at the Baron de Gortz.
The baron was unhurt, but the bullet shattered the box he held in his arms.
He uttered a terrible cry.
“Her voice—her voice!” he repeated. “Her soul—La Stilla’s soul—it is ruined—ruined—ruined!”
And then with his hair bristling and his hands clenched, he was seen to run along the terrace, shouting,—
“Her voice—her voice! They have taken away from me her voice! Curse them!”
And he disappeared through the door at the moment. Rotzko and Nic Deck were, without waiting for the police, striving to scale the wall.
Almost immediately a tremendous explosion shook the whole extent of Plesa. Sheaves of flame sprang to the clouds, and an avalanche of stones fell on the Vulkan road.
Bastions, curtain, donjon, chapel, were nothing but a pile of ruins scattered over the Orgall plateau.
CHAPTER XVII.
It will not have been forgotten that according to the conversation between the baron and Orfanik, the explosion should only have destroyed the castle after the departure of Rodolphe de Gortz. But at the time the explosion took place it was impossible for the baron to have had time to escape through the tunnel. In the transport of grief, in the folly of despair, unconscious of what he did, had then Rodolphe de Gortz brought on an immediate catastrophe of which he could but be the first victim? After the incomprehensible words which had escaped him when Rotzko’s bullet had broken the box he carried, had he intended to bury himself beneath the ruins of the castle?
In any case it was very fortunate that the police, surprised by Rotzko’s shot, were at a considerable distance when the explosion shook the ground. Only a few of them were struck by the fragments which fell over the plateau. Rotzko and the forester were alone at the base of the curtain, and it was indeed a miracle that they were not killed by the shower of stones.
The explosion had done its work when Rotzko, Nic Deck, and the police entered the enclosure over the ditch, which had been nearly filled up by the fall of the walls.
Fifty yards within the wall, at the base of the donjon, a body was found among the ruins.
It was that of Rodolphe de Gortz. A few old people of the district—among others Master Koltz—recognized him perfectly.
Rotzko and Nic Deck sought only to discover the young count. As Franz had not appeared in the time arranged with his man, it followed that he had been unable to escape from the castle.
But could Rotzko hope that he had survived, that he was not one of the victims of the catastrophe? And so he cried, and Nic Deck did not know what to do to soothe him.
However, in about half an hour the young count was found on the first floor of the donjon, beneath one of the buttresses, which had saved him from being crushed.
“My master—my poor master!”
“Count—”
Such were the first words uttered by Rotzko and Nic Deck as they bent over Franz. They believed him dead; he had only fainted.
Franz opened his eyes, but his wandering look did not seem to recognize Rotzko, nor did he hear him.
Nic Deck, who had raised the young count in his arms, spoke to him again, but he made no reply.
The last words of La Stilla’s song alone escaped from his lips,—
Inamorata—voglio morire.
Franz de Télek was mad!
CHAPTER XVIII.
As the young count had gone mad, no one would probably have ever heard an explanation of the events of which the Castle of the Carpathians had been the theatre, if it had not been for the revelations which came about in this manner:—
For four days Orfanik had waited as agreed for the baron to meet him at the town of Bistritz. But as he did not appear, he began to wonder if he had perished in the explosion. Urged as much by curiosity as anxiety, he had left the town, gone back towards Werst, and was prowling about the ruins of the castle, when he was arrested by the police, who knew him from the description given by Rotzko.
Once in the chief town of the district, in the presence of the magistrates before whom he had been taken, Orfanik made no difficulty about replying to the questions put to him in the course of the inquiry ordered into the circumstances of this catastrophe.
But it must be confessed that the sad end of the Baron de Gortz seemed in no way to affect this learned egotist and maniac, whose heart was entirely in his inventions.
In the first place, on the urgent demand of Rotzko, Orfanik stated that La Stilla was dead, really dead and such was his expression—buried, and well buried, for more than five years in the cemetery of Santo Nuovo Campo at Naples.
This statement was not the least astonishing of those provoked by this curious adventure.
If La Stilla were dead, how came it that Franz could hear her voice in the saloon of the inn, see her on the bastion, and listen to her song when he was in the crypt? And how could he have found her alive in the donjon?
The explanation of this apparently inexplicable phenomena was as follows:—
It will be remembered how deep was the baron’s despair when the rumour spread that La Stilla had resolved to retire from the stage and become Countess of Télek. The artiste’s admirable talent and all his dilettante gratifications would thus escape him. Then it was that Orfanik suggested that by means of the phonograph he should collect the principal airs from the operas she would appear in during her farewell performances at San Carlo. This instrument had reached a high state of perfection at this period, and Orfanik had so improved it that the human voice underwent no change, and lost none of its charm or purity.
The baron accepted Orfanik’s offer. Phonographs were successively and secretly introduced into the private box at the theatre during the last weeks of the season; and in this way their cylinders received the cavatinas and romances from the operas and concerts, including the melody from “San Stefano,” and the final air from “Orlando,” which was interrupted by La Stilla’s death.
These were the circumstances under which the baron had shut himself up in the Castle of the Carpathians, and there, each night, he listened to the music given out by the phonograph. And not only did he hear La Stilla as if he were in his box, but—and that would appear absolutely incomprehensible—he saw her as if she were alive, before his eyes.
It was a simple optical illusion.
It will be remembered that Baron de Gortz had obtained a magnificent portrait of the singer. This portrait represented her in the white costume of Angelica in “Orlando,” her magnificent hair in disorder, her arms extended. By means of glasses inclined at a certain angle calculated by Orfanik, when a light was thrown on the portrait placed in front of a glass, La Stilla appeared by reflection as real as if she were alive, and in all the splendour of her beauty. It was by means of this apparatus, taken for the night