Page:Marquis de Sade - Adelaide of Brunswick.djvu/68

 this tower which frightens you so much no longer has her since you have seen two people leave it, supposing that she was one of the two. It would seem that she is now free."

"What does it matter? Let's look for her always. Let's search all the towers which we can find. Let's go into all the forests. Let's fulfill the aim of our trip and let nothing stop us in our purpose."

This firm resolution caused the prince to go back to Germany, a country more abundant in towers and forests than Holland. They returned to Hamburg where they had left their arms and started out for Munster.

During this time Adelaide and her companion were spending sad days in the frightful prison where they had been placed and the more their work advanced the more fright took over their souls. An old blind man who brought them their food and who only spoke to them by monosyllables gave them no inkling of their fate. When Schinders appeared at the end of the month, as he had announced, he examined their work and did not find it very much advanced.

"It seems to me that you love life," he said to his prisoners, "I imagined, however, that it would not have so much attraction for you in the frightful situation in which you find yourself. But it does not matter; as I have told you, you are the mistresses of your fate, a few months more or less are not of great importance. Since you like life so much, you can enjoy all the poisons of it."

Then passing into the little garden with his prisoners:

"What!" he said in a harsh voice, "these graves have not even been started. If you are not in a hurry to prepare a place for your mortal remains, I shall let them be devoured by the crows, or I will make of them the nourishment of the fish in the pond."

"This is of little importance for us," said Adelaide. "We don't care what becomes of our bodies when they are no longer animated with the principle which inspires them today. What is sure is that this principle will always be imprinted with the hatred which it owes to its tyrants."

"It is not the wife of Frederick who should reproach those who punish the tyrannies of her husband."

"Frederick was never a tyrant. He is a feeble and credulous