As she thus sat, absorbed in the story of her lover's early misfortunes, a murmuring sound of talking attracted her ear, apparently issuing from the closet. Hastily throwing open the door, she found that a thin wooden partition, veined with numerous chinks, was the sole separation between the closet and an adjoining bed-room. The words were startling, incoherent, and at times raving. Evidently they proceeded from some patient stretched on a bed of sickness, and dealing with a sort of horrors in his distempered fancy, worse, it was to be hoped, than any which the records of his own remembrance could bring before him. Sometimes he spoke in the character of one who chases a deer in a forest; sometimes he was close upon the haunches of his game; sometimes it seemed on the point of escaping him. Then the nature of the game changed utterly, and became something human; and a companion was suddenly at his side. With him he quarrelled fiercely about their share in the pursuit and capture. "O, my lord, you must not deny it. Look, look! your hands are bloodier than mine. Fie! fie! is there no running water in the forest?--So young as he is, and so noble!--Stand off! he will cover us all with his blood!--O, what a groan was that! It will have broke somebody's heart-strings, I think! It would have broken mine when I was younger. But these wars make us all cruel. Yet you are worse than I am." Then again, after a pause, the patient seemed to start up in bed, and he cried out, convulsively, "Give me my share, I say. Wherefore must my share be so small? There he comes past again. Now strike--now, now, now! Get his head down, my lord.--He's off, by G--! Now, if he gets out of the forest, two hours will take him to Vienna. And we must go to Rome: where else could we get absolution? 0, Heavens! the forest is full of blood; well may our hands be bloody. I see flowers all the way to Vienna: but there is blood below: 0, what a depth! what a depth!--O! heart, heart!--See how he starts up from his lair!--O! your highness has deceived me! There are a thousand upon one man!" In such terms he continued to rave, until Paulina's mind was so much harassed with the constant succession of dreadful images and frenzied ejaculations, all making report of a life passed in scenes of horror, bloodshed, and violence, that at length, for her own relief, she was obliged to close the door; through which, however, at intervals, piercing shrieks or half-stifled curses still continued to find their way. It struck her as a remarkable coincidence, that something like a slender thread of connection might be found between the dreadful story narrated in the imperial document, and the delirious ravings of this poor, wretched creature, to whom accident had made her a neighbor for a single night.