Again beneath the moon there passed heavy clouds, extinguishing her light so that for a moment my prison was once more steeped in darkness--I found myself thinking that there would be snow ere morning; that, if that morning brought my death, 'twould be a bleak and wintry scene which the flames of the _braséro_ would illuminate!--then through a break in those clouds a ray stole forth, a ray that glinted in through the iron bars of the window grate, across the stone-flagged floor, and onward to the heavily clamped door, then was arrested there--one spot shining out amidst those beams with the brightness and the dazzle of a diamond.
What was that thing, that spot on which the ray glinted so?
Creeping toward the door, as silently and lightly as I could go, I reached it, put out my finger and touched that gleaming spark, and found that it proceeded from the extremity of a key which was in the lock and which now protruded by a trifle into the room. It was the insertion of that key which had awakened me.
Yet--what did it mean, and why, when once in the lock, was it not turned; why not followed by the entry of one or more persons into the cell?
Were they coming back later to fall on me? Had the key been first inserted by some who had withdrawn directly afterward, so that, if the noise awakened me, I should sleep again shortly, when they could return to finish their work? This must be the true explanation--I was to be executed in the depth of the night when all were asleep in the old town, when no cry of anguish, no scream from one being done to death, would be heard.
"Yet," I thought to myself, "these precautions are useless. As well here as in the flames to-morrow. What matters where or how?"
At that moment my ears caught a sound--something was passing down the stone passage outside--something that was not the heavy tread of the jailer. Instead, a muffled sound--yet perceptible to me. A shuffling, scraping sound as though one who was shoeless was dragging each foot carefully along after the other.
Then I saw the end of the key which projected through the lock turn--I saw it sparkle in the moon's rays--once it grated harshly, creaked! And, slowly, a moment afterward the door opened inward, leaving the passage outside dark and cavernous. He who had so opened it with one hand carried no light in the other.