"What will you do?" cried the terrified woman, again and again seeking some outlet in the walls. "I will drown you, slowly and surely, in the waterworks of this bath, which your friend Cassiodorus built. You do not know what tortures of jealousy and impotent rage I endured in this house when your wedding with Eutharic was celebrated, and I was compelled to serve in your train. In this room, you proud woman, I unloosed your sandals, and dried your fair limbs--in this room you shall die?" She touched a spring in the wall. The floor of the basin, the round metal plate, divided into two halves, which slid slowly into the walls on the right and left. With horror the imprisoned woman looked down from the narrow gallery into the chasm thus opened at her feet. "Remember that day in the meadow!" cried Gothelindis; and in the lower story the sluices were suddenly opened, and the waters of the lake rushed in, roaring and hissing, and rose higher and higher with fearful rapidity. Amalaswintha saw certain death before her. She saw the impossibility of escape, or of softening her fiendish enemy by prayers. At this crisis, the hereditary courage of the Amelungs returned to her; she composed herself, and was reconciled to her fate. She descried, amid the numerous reliefs of mythological subjects near her, a representation of the death of Christ on the right of the entrance. The sight strengthened her mind; she threw herself upon her knees before the marble cross, clasped it with both ands, and prayed quietly with closed eyes, while the water rose and rose; it already splashed upon the steps of the gallery. "You pray, murderess? Away from the cross!" cried Gothelindis, enraged; "think of the three dukes!" Suddenly all the dolphin and triton heads on the right side of the octagon began to spout streams of hot rater; white steam rushed out of the pipes. Amalaswintha sprang up and ran to the left side of the gallery. "Gothelindis, I forgive you! Kill me, but forgive me also!" And the water rose and rose; it already covered the topmost step of the bath, and slowly wetted the floor of the gallery. And now the streaming water-pipes spouted upon Amalaswintha from the left also. She took refuge in the middle of the gallery, directly opposite the Medusa, the only place where no steam from the hot-water pipe could reach her. If she mounted the spring-board, which was placed here, she could respite her life for some time longer. Gothelindis seemed to expect that she would do so, and to revel in the prospect of the lengthened torture of the agonised woman. The water already rushed over the marble flooring of the gallery and laved the feet of Amalaswintha. She ran quickly up the brown and shining wooden steps, and leaned over the railing of the bridge. "Hear me, Gothelindis! my last prayer! not for myself, but for my people, for _our_ people. Petros will destroy them, and Theodahad----"