Meanwhile, Lorenzo, running to and fro, had flashed his lantern upon a creature so wretched, so emaciated, that he doubted to think her woman.  He stopped petrified with horror.

“Two days, and yet no food!” she moaned.  “No hope, no comfort!” Suddenly she looked up and addressed him.

“Do you bring me food, or do you bring me death?”

“I come,” he replied, “to relieve your sorrows.”

“God, is it possible?  Oh, yes!  Yes, it is!”—­she fainted.  Lorenzo carried her in his arms to the nuns above.

Loud shrieks summoned him below again.  Hastening after the officers, he saw a woman bleeding on the ground.  He went to her; it was his beloved Antonia.  She was dying; with a few sweet words of farewell, her spirit passed away.

Broken-hearted, he returned.  He had lost Antonia, but he was to learn that Agnes was restored to him.  The woman he had rescued was indeed his sister, saved from a living death and brought back to life and love.

V.—­Lucifer

Ambrosio was tortured into confession, and condemned to be burned at the stake.  Matilda, terrified at the sight of her fellow-criminal’s torments, confessed without torture, and was sentenced to be burned at his side.

They were to perish at midnight, and as the monk, in panic-stricken despair, awaited the awful hour, suddenly Matilda stood before him, beautifully attired, with a look of wild pleasure in her eyes.

“Matilda!” he cried, “how have you gained entrance?”

“Ambrosio,” she replied, “I am free.  For life and liberty I have sold my soul to Lucifer.  Dare you do the same?”

The monk shuddered.

“I cannot renounce my God,” he said.

“Fool!  What hope have you of God’s mercy?” She handed him a book.  “If you repent of your folly, read the first four lines in the seventh page backwards.”  She vanished.

A fearful struggle raged in the monk’s spirit.  What hope had he in any case of escaping eternal torment?  And yet—­was not the Almighty’s mercy infinite?  Then the thought of the stake and the flames entered his mind and appalled him.

At last the fatal hour came.  The steps of his gaolers were heard in the passage.  In uttermost terror he opened the book and ran over the lines, and straightway the fiend appeared—­not seraph-like as when he appeared formerly, but dark, hideous, and gigantic, with hissing snakes coiling around his brows.

He placed a parchment before Ambrosio.

“Bear me hence!” cried the monk.

“Will you be mine, body and soul?” said the demon.  “Resolve while there is time!”

“I must!”

“Sign, then!” Lucifer thrust a pen into the flesh of Ambrosio’s arm, and the monk signed.  A moment later he was carried through the roof of the dungeon into mid-air.

The demon bore him with arrow-like speed to the brink of a precipice in the Sierra Morena.