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 camea 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 discoveredall
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