The boatswain is beginning to feel sleepy, and would therefore like Jozef to tell him the end at once; but this Jozef is by no means inclined to do,—he goes ahead valiantly, and by degrees, though he does not observe it, his whole audience drops asleep. At last, when he has reached the closing scene, there is no one to listen to it but the master-tailor, who can scarcely keep his small grey eyes open.
“Just hear this, now!” says Jozef, who—though he has read the book through twice before—is as enthusiastic over this passage as the first time. “Now you must listen! Now the Count is sitting up alone in the rocks, in a ... cavern, they call it, ... and now he is the Bandit with the Grey Beard; and the other robbers are sitting in the back of the cavern round a great big fire, and some of them are lying asleep, and the others are roasting great pieces of meat at the fire, and they’re drinking wine with it ... out of gold cups that they’ve stolen.... But the Bandit with the Grey Beard— ... _he’s_ sitting all by himself, you see,—and now Krimhelia comes in—you know—the young lady he thinks so much of.”
And Jozef resumes his reading—how Krimhelia approaches, cautiously, with the glittering dagger; how the Grey-Bearded Bandit, looking up, suddenly sees her standing behind him; how Krimhelia seizes him by the beard and drives the dagger into his heart; and how, at the same moment, the long grey beard comes off in her hand, and she looks with horror on the “pallid dying countenance” of Count Matatskai.
Now follows a dialogue between the dying bandit chief and the “almost fainting” Krimhelia, who is “filled with consternation”; in the course of which the tailor finally closes his eyes unobserved.
Now comes the closing scene; the other robbers come out from behind the fire, Krimhelia takes to flight, and climbs to the top of a steep dark rock on the edge of a “yawning abyss.”
As Jozef reads, he bends over his book, leans his head on his hands, and sees the whole thing taking place before his eyes. He sees Krimhelia standing on the top of the rock. The day is breaking in the east. The robbers are pursuing her, and begin to climb the rock....
Jozef reads on,—at a passionately accelerated pace, and with the most singular stops imaginable:—