18 MATHIAS SANDORF. CHAPTER VIII. AFTER THE SEXTENCE. Sarcany was taken back to the cell he occupied at the bottom of an elliptic corridor on the second floor of the donjon. Sandorf and his two friends, during the last hours of life that remained to them, were quartered in a large cell on the same level, exactly at the end of the major axis of the ellipse which this corridor made. The secret was now known. The condemned were to be left together until their execution. This was a consolation, even a pleasure for them, when they found themselves alone and allowed to give way to feelings which they could not at first restrain. "My friends," said Sandorf, " I am the cause Of your deaths! But I have nothing to ask your pardon for! We worked for the independence of Hungary! Our cause was just! It is our duty to defend her! It is an honor to die for her!" „ , . "Mathias," said Bathory, " we thank yon for having associated us with you in the patriotic work whicli would have been the work of all your life—" " As we are associated with you in death!" added Zath- mar. Then during a momentary silence the three gazed round the gloomy cell in which they were to spend their last hours. A narrow window some four or five feet high, cut through the thick wall of the donjon, let in a certain amount of light. There were three iron bedsteads, a few chairs, a table and a shelf or two, on which were a few articles of crockery. Zathmar and Bathory were soon lost in thought. Sandorf began to walk up and down the cell. Zathmar was alone in the world, had no family ties and no near relations. There was only his old servant, Borik, to mourn for him. It was not so with Bathory. Hia death would not only prove a blow to himself. He had a wife and son whom it would reach. That wife and child might even die! And if they survived him, how were they to live? What was to be the future of a penniless woman and her eight-year- old child? Had Bathory possessed any property, how much of it would remainafter a judgment which directed it to be confiscated and sentenced him to death? As for Sandorf, all his past life returned to him! His wife came to him! His little daughter came—a child of two years old, now left to the care of the steward. And there were his friends whom he had led to ruin! He asked himself if he had done well, if he had not gone further than his duty toward his country required? Would that the punishment had fallen on him alone, and not upon those that were innocent! " No! no! I liave only done my duty!" he said to him- self. " My country before all and above all!" At five o'clock a warder entered the cell, placed the dinner on the table, and went out again without saying a word. Sandorf would have liked to know in what fortress he was kept a prisoner, but as the president of the court- martial had not thought fit to answer the question it was quite certain that the warder would not give the informa- tion. The prisoners hardly touched the dinner which had been prepared for them. They passed the rest of the day talking on various matters, in the hope that then- abortive attempt would one day be resumed. Very often they returned to the incidents of the trial. " We now know," said Zathmar, " why we have been arrested, and how the police discovered us from that letter which they came across." " Yes, Ladislas," said Sandorf, " but into whose hands did that message, which was one of the last we received, at first fall, and who copied it?" "And when it was copied," added Bathory, "how did they read it without the grating?" " The grating must have been stolen," said Sandorf. " Stolen! and by whom?" asked Zathmar. "The day we were arrested it was still in the drawer on rny desk, whence the police took it." This was, indeed, inexplicable. That the letter had been found on the pigeon; that it had been copied before being sent to its destination; .that the house where the person to whom it was addressed had been discovered—all that could be explained. But that the cryptographic dispatch could have been deciphered without the gratin by which it had been formed was incomprehensible. ^ "And besides," continued Sandorf, " we know that th letter was read, and it could not have been read without the grating! It was this letter which put the police on our traces, and it was on it that the whole chars-p »,» » -, ,, o^ "(IS based. "It matters very little, after all," answered Bathory, " On the contrary, it does matter," said Sandorf. "\ We -not ligible have been betrayed! And if there has been a traitor—-r. to know—" Sandorf suddenly stopped. The name of Sarcany oc- curred to him; but he abandoned the thought at once without caring to communicate it to his companions. Far into the night Sandorf and his companions con- tinued their conversation on all that was unintelli with regard to these matters. In the morning they were awakened from sound sleep by the entry of the warder. It was the morning of then- last day but one. The execution was fixed to take place in twenty-four hours from then. Bathory asked the warder if he might be permitted to see his family. The warder replied that he had no orders on the sub- ject. It was not likely that the government would con- sent to give the prisoners this last consolation, inasmuch as they had conducted the affair throughout with the greatest secrecy, and not even the name of the fortress which served them as a prison had been revealed. "If we write letters, will they be forwarded?" asked Sandorf. "I will bring you paper, pens and ink," replied the warder; "and I promise to give your letters into the gov- ernor's hands." "We are much obliged to you," said Sandorf. "If you do that, you do all you can! How shall we reward you?" " Your thanks are sufficient, gentlemen," said the warder, who could not conceal his emotion. He soon brought in the writing materials. The prison- ers spent the greater part of the day in making their last arrangements. Sandorf said all that a father's heart could prompt in his instructions regarding his baby girl, who would soon be an orphan; Bathory, all that a husband and father could think of in bidding a loving farewell to his wife and son; Zathmar, all that a master could say to an old servant who remained his only friend. But during the day, although absorbed in their writing, how many times did they stop to listen! How many times did they seek to discover if some distant noise was not coming along the corridors of the donjon! How many times did it seem to them as though the door of their cell had opened, and that they were to be permitted one last embrace of wife, son or daughter! That would have been some consolation! But, in truth, the pitiless order de- prived them of this last adieu and spared them the heart- rending scene. The door did not open. Doubtless neither Mme. Bathory nor her son, nor "the steward, Lendeck, to whose care Sandorfs daughter had been given, knew any more where the prisoners had been taken to after their arrest than Borik in his prison at Trieste. Doubtless, also, neither knew of the doom in store for the conspirators. Thus passed the earlier hours of the day. Occasionally Sandorf and his friends would talk for awhile. Occa- sionally they would be silent for some time, and then the whole of their lives would be lived over again in their memories with an intensity of impression quite super- natural. It was not with the past, as affecting the past, that they were entirely concerned; the recollections seemed all to shape themselves with a view to the present. Was it, then, a prescience of that eternity which was about to open on them, of that incomprehensible and m- commensurate state of things which is called the i'1?"1^- Bathory and Zathmar abandoned themselves witnoni reserve to their reveries, but Sandorf was invincibly dom- inated bv an idea which had taken possession ot nn ¦ He could not doubt that there had been treachei.. « this mysterious affair. Por a man of his character too without punishing the traitor, whoever he was, wit' knowing even who had betrayed him, was to die over. Who had got hold of this message to wlncn police owed the discovery of the conspiracy ana