Rinaldi. You couldn't hear us from there?
Imperia. No, but it was easy to see. You looked over continually. Were you surprised to find me here?
Rinaldi. Certainly not; we are here ourselves.
Leonardo. Perhaps the Countess will explain the reason?
Rinaldi. It is not necessary. We are all here for the same thing, more or less. We may be perfectly frank if we like; no one will remember to-morrow.
Imperia. We are like witches, meeting on Saturday night. I was a little girl when I first heard the legend, and you remind me of it now. There was a poor woman who lived near our house; she was very old, and, apparently, very respectable. She lived alone, and you would have said that she was a good woman. Her house was clean; she worked in the garden by day, busy with her flowers, or fed the pigeons; at night she sewed a little on her quaint old clothes. She was never idle—it was a calm and peaceful life, lived openly in the sun. But people said that she was a witch, and every Saturday at midnight, as the clock struck twelve, she mounted a broomstick and flew away to the witches' lair, and there with the other witches she did homage to Satan; and if you could surprise them then, you would see them as they really were. One day, some time later, at dawn on a Sunday morning, the old woman was found dead, out of her bed, at some distance from her house, in an open field, and there was a dagger in her heart. But nobody could ever find the assassin, nor discover any motive for the murder, nor could any one ever explain the reason why that woman should have been found in that place on that morning, when she had been seen closing the door of her house as usual the night before, and in the morning, when they carried the body there, the door was still closed.
Rinaldi. But you don't really mean?… Nonsense! Then you would have to believe in witches.
