"Remy! Remy!" cried Diana, "do not say that. The life of him you threaten does not belong to you--it is mine--I have paid for it dearly enough. I swear to you, Remy, that on the day on which I knelt beside the dead body of him"--and she pointed to the portrait--"on that day I approached my lips to that open wound, and the trembling lips seemed to say to me, 'Avenge me, Diana!--avenge me!'"
"Therefore, I repeat, vengeance is for me, and not for you; besides, for whom and through whom did he die? By me and through me."
"I must obey you, madame, for I also was left for dead. Who carried me away from the middle of the corpses with which that room was filled?--You. Who cured me of my wounds?--You. Who concealed me?--You always. Order, then, and I will obey, provided that you do not order me to leave you."
"So be it, Remy; you are right; nothing ought to separate us more."
"Now, madame," said he, "he was killed by treason--it is by treason that he must be revenged. Ah! you do not know one thing--the hand of God is with us, for to-night I have found the secret of the 'Aqua tofana,' that poison of the Medicis and of Rene the Florentine."
"The poor old man has come sixty leagues on horseback; he is tired out, and has fallen asleep on my bed."
"Come, then," said Diana; and she followed Remy.
Remy led the lady into a neighboring room; and pushing a spring which was hidden under a board in the floor, and which, opening, disclosed a straight dark staircase, gave his hand to Diana to help her to descend. Twenty steps of this staircase, or rather ladder, led into a dark and circular cave, whose only furniture was a stove with an immense hearth, a square table, two rush chairs, and a quantity of phials and iron boxes. In the stove a dying fire still gleamed, while a thick black smoke escaped through a pipe fastened into the wall. From a still placed on the hearth a few drops of a liquid, yellow as gold, was dropping into a thick white phial. Diana looked round her without astonishment or terror; the ordinary feelings of life seemed to be unknown to her who lived only in the tomb. Remy lighted a lamp, and then approached a well hollowed out in the cave, attached a bucket to a long cord, let it down into the well, and then drew it up full of a water as cold as ice and as clear as crystal.