You! Base calumniator!

_Gab._ I. 'Twill rest
With me at last to be so. You concealed me--
In secret passages known to yourself,
You said, and to none else. At dead of night,
Weary with watching in the dark, and dubious
Of tracing back my way, I saw a glimmer,
Through distant crannies, of a twinkling light:
I followed it, and reached a door--a secret 310
Portal--which opened to the chamber, where,
With cautious hand and slow, having first undone
As much as made a crevice of the fastening,
I looked through and beheld a purple bed,
And on it Stralenheim!--

_Sieg._ Asleep! And yet
You slew him!--Wretch!

_Gab._ He was already slain,
And bleeding like a sacrifice. My own
Blood became ice.

_Sieg._ But he was all alone!
You saw none else? You did not see the----
[_He pauses from agitation_.

_Gab._ No,
_He_, whom you dare not name, nor even I 320
Scarce dare to recollect, was not then in
The chamber.

_Sieg._ (_to_ ULRIC). Then, my boy! thou art guiltless still--
Thou bad'st me say _I_ was so once.--Oh! now
Do thou as much.

_Gab._ Be patient! I can _not_
Recede now, though it shake the very walls
Which frown above us. You remember,--or
If not, your son does,--that the locks were changed
Beneath _his_ chief inspection on the morn
Which led to this same night: how he had entered
He best knows--but within an antechamber, 330
The door of which was half ajar, I saw
A man who washed his bloody hands, and oft
With stern and anxious glance gazed back upon--
The bleeding body--but it moved no more.

_Sieg._ Oh! God of fathers!

_Gab._ I beheld his features
As I see yours--but yours they were not, though
Resembling them--behold them in Count Ulric's!
Distinct as I beheld them, though the expression
Is not now what it then was!--but it was so
When I first charged him with the crime--so lately. 340

_Sieg._ This is so--

_Gab._ (_interrupting him_). Nay--but hear me to the end!
_Now_ you must do so.--I conceived myself
Betrayed by you and _him_ (for now I saw