Page:History of Blue Beard.pdf/14

14 Again the voice of Blue Beard was heard and she begged for one minute longer. She then called out for the last time, "Sister Anne, do you see no one coming yet?"

Her sister quickly answered, "I see two men on horseback, but they are still a great way off."

The hope of deliverance made Fatima exclaim, in the ecstacy of the moment, "Thank Heaven! thank Heaven! I shall yet be saved, for it must be my two brothers!—my dear



sister, make every signal in your power to hasten them forward, or they will be too late to prevent my fate."

Blue Beard's patience being exhausted, he burst open the door in a rage, and made a blow with his scimitar at the wretched Fatima, with the intention of striking off her head; but she sprang close to him and evaded it. Furious at being foiled in his aim, he threw her from him, and then seizing her by the hair of the head, was in the act of striking her a blow with his scimitar, which would have terminated her existence, when the noise of persons approaching, with hasty steps, arrested the progress of his sanguinary arm. Blue Beard bad not time to conjecture who the intruders might be, when the door opened, and two officers with their swords drawn, rushed into the apartment.

Struck with terror, the wretch released his wife from his grasp, and without attempting to resist, he endeavoured to effect his escape from the resentment of her brothers; but they pursued, and seized him before he had got above twenty paces from the place. After reproaching Blue Beard with his cruelty, they dragged him back to the spot where he intended to have murdered their sister; and there, stabbing him to the heart with their swords, he expired uttering the most horrid oaths and imprecations.