The Province of Vaza also, lying to the north of the Altara Highlands, the Alpine range of the Gigants, was harassed in parts by the Zanthos. The capital, Vaza, was flooded. In the neighbourhood of the mountain-slopes the province had been spared. There vast terraces of vineyards lay, alternating with forests of chestnut-trees and walnut-trees and olives. The glittering white snow-line of the mountain-tops surged up against a dazzling blue sky, piercing it with its crests and biting long pieces out of the deep azure in ragged lines; it seemed to whet ice-teeth, gleaming white fangs, against the metal of the firmament, which was like burnished steel. There, enthroned on its rocks, twelve miles from the town, stood old Castel Vaza, the castle of the dukes of Yemena and counts of Vaza, surrounded by parks and woods, half castle, half citadel, strong, simple, medieval, rough in outline, with its four towers and its square patches of battlements, rounding off the horizon about it on every side and keeping it aloof. Near at hand, a swarm of little villages; in the distance, the towers and steeples, the huddled roofs of Vaza; still farther, in the circle of panorama that broadly girt the towers, the wide Zanthos, winding down to hurl itself into the sea, and Lycilia, white in the sun with its little squares of houses, set brilliantly on the blue of the water; then a second sea: the mountain-tops, surging away in snowy vistas and distant mists. And, also glittering in the sun, those strange lakes on the Zanthos: the water which the full river had vomited, the inundations....

---

The square castle, enclosing a courtyard in its four wings, has two more wings added at the back, in a newer style of more elegant renascence, and looking on the park, in which lie the ornamental basins, like oval dishes of liquid silver, set in emerald lawns. The fallow deer graze there, dreaming, as it were, and graceful, roaming slowly on slim legs: sometimes, suddenly, extending themselves, their heads thrown back, their eyes wild, they run some distance, a number of them, fleeing before an unseen terror; others, calmer, graze on, laconically, philosophically.

The dukes of Yemena and counts of Vaza are one of the oldest families of the empire; and their ancestral tree is rooted ages back, before the time of the first emperor of Liparia. The present duke, court-marshal and Constable of Liparia, has three children of his first marriage: the heir to his title, the young Marquis of Xardi, aide-de-camp to the emperor, and two daughters, younger, girls still, at a convent.

The duchess is alone at the castle. She is sitting in a large boudoir, built out with a triangular loggia, and looking over the park, the basins, the deer. A breeze is blowing outside; and the rapid clouds, which, like flaky spectres, like rags hidden beneath diaphanous veils, chase one another through the clear blue sky, trail their shadows, like quick eclipses, across the park, just tinting it with passing darkness, which darkens the deer in their turn and then makes them gleam brown again in the sun. It is silent outside; it is silent in the castle. The castle stands secluded; within, the servants move softly through the reception-rooms and corridors, speaking in whispers, in expectation of the august visitors.

Lunch is over. The duchess lies half-out-stretched on a couch and gazes at the deer. She is not yet dressed and wears a tea-gown, loose, with many folds: vieux rose brochÉ, salmon-coloured plush and old lace. When she is alone, she likes plenty of light, from a healthy need of space and air; the curtains are drawn aside from the tall bow-windows and the shrillness of the spring sky comes streaming in. But the light does not suit her beauty; for, though her hair is still raven black, her complexion has the dullness of faded white roses; her eyes, which can be beautiful, large, liquid and dark, look full of lassitude, encircled with pale-yellow shadows; and very clearly visible are the little wrinkles at the side, the little grooves etched around the delicate nose, the lines that have lengthened the mouth and draw it down.

The duchess rises slowly; she passes through a door that leads to her bedroom and dressing-room and stays away for a few moments. Then she returns; in both hands, pressing it to her, with difficulty, she carries an obviously heavy casket and sets it on the table in front of the couch. The casket is of old wrought silver enriched with gilt chasing and great blue turquoises, of that costly renascence work which is not made nowadays. She selects a little straight, gold key from her bracelet and unlocks the casket. The jewels glisten—pearls, brilliants, sapphires, emeralds—and catch in their facets all the spring light of the sky, blue, white and yellow. But the duchess presses a spring unclosing a secret drawer, from which she takes two packets of letters and some photographs.

The photographs all show the face of a man no longer young, a strange face, half-dreamy, half-sensual, filled with great mystery and great charm. The photographs show him in the elaborate uniform of an officer of the throne-guards, in fancy-dress as a medieval knight, in flannels and in ordinary mufti. The duchess' eyes pass slowly from one to the other; she compares the likenesses, a sad smile about her mouth and melancholy in her eyes. Then she unties the ribbons of the letters, takes them out of the carefully preserved envelopes, unfolds them and reads here and there and reads again and refolds them....

She knows by heart the phrases that still tell her of a strange passion, the most fervent, the truest, the simplest and perhaps for that reason the strangest that she has ever felt, that has surrounded her with fairy meshes of fire. Though her eyes look out again at the deer—the sunshine streams like fluid gold over the park—between her and the peaceful landscape there rise up, transparent, in tenderly gleaming phantasmagorias, remembrances of the past, the pictures of that love, and it seems to her as though sparks are dancing before her eyes, as though brilliant curves and scintillations of light are swarming on every hand. She lives through past events in a few moments; then she closes her eyes, draws her hand over her forehead and thinks how sad it is that the past is nothing more than a little memory, which flies like dust and ashes through our souls which we sometimes endeavour, in vain, to collect in a costly urn. How sad it is that one cannot go on mourning, though one wish to, because life does not permit it! Nothing but that dust and ashes in her soul ... and those letters, those photographs....

She locks them away again and now gazes at the jewels. And she looks well into her own heart, sees herself exactly as she is, for she knows that she has been loyal, always, loyal to him and to herself: loyal when their love broke like a glittering rainbow of sparkling colours on a wide firmament and she became unwilling to see or to exist and withdrew from the court into this castle and let it be rumoured that a lingering illness was causing her to pine away. And she mourned and mourned, first sobbing and wringing her hands, then calmer in despair, then ... The deer had gone on grazing there, as though they always remained unchanged. But she....

---

She had been loyal, always: in her despair and also in what followed, in the abatement of that despair. Then she was saddest of all, because despair was able to abate. Then sad, because she still lived and felt vitality within her. Then ... because she began to grow bored. Because of all this a great despair had filled her strange soul, luxuriantly, as with the morbid blossoms of strange orchids. She hated, despised, cursed herself. But nothing changed in her. She was bored.

She led a solitary life at the castle. Her husband and her stepson were at Lipara; her stepdaughters, to whom she was much attached, were finishing their education at a convent, of which an imperial princess, a sister of the emperor, was abbess.

She was alone, she never saw anybody. And she was bored. Life awoke in her anew, for it had only slumbered, she had deemed it dead, had wished to bury it in a sepulchre around which her memories should stand as statues. Within herself, she felt herself to be what she had always been, in spite of all her love: a woman of the world, hankering after the glamour of imperial surroundings, that court splendour which fatally reattracts and is indispensable to those who have inhaled it from their birth as their vital air. And, at moments when she was not thinking of her despair, she thought of the Imperial, saw herself there, brilliant in her ripe beauty, made much of and adored as she had always been.

Then she caused her stepson, the Marquis of Xardi, to spread the rumour that she was convalescent. A month later, in the middle of the winter season, after a great court festival but before one of the intimate assemblies in the empress' own apartments, she requested an audience of Elizabeth.

Thus she beheld herself in true, clear truth and was deeply mournful in her poor soul filled with desire of love and desire of the world and humanity, because life insisted on continuing so cruelly, as in a mad triumphal progress, crushing her memories under its chariot-wheels, clattering through her melancholy with its trumpet-blasts, making her see the paltriness of mankind, the pettiness of its feeling, the littleness of its soul, which is nevertheless the only thing it has....

---

The duchess locks the twice-precious casket away again. She forgets what is going on about her, what is awaiting her; she gazes, dreams and lives again in the past, with the enjoyment which a woman finds in the past when she loses her youth.

There is a knock at the door, a footman appears and bows:

"Excellency, the cook begs urgently to be allowed to speak to you in person...."

"The cook?..."

She raises her beautiful face, dreaming, half-laughing, with its profile like Cleopatra's, so Egyptian in its delicacy and symmetry, settles herself a little higher on the couch and leans on her hand:

"Let him come in...."

Everything returns to her, reality, the actual day; and she smiles because of it and shrugs her shoulders: such is life.

The footman goes out; the cook enters in his white apron and white cap: he is nervous and, now that his mistress is already frowning her eyebrows because of his disrespectful costume, he begins to stammer:

"Forgive me, excellency...."

And he points with an unhappy face to his apron, his white sleeves....

And he complains that the head gamekeeper has not provided sufficient ortolans. He cannot make his pasty; he dares not take it upon himself, excellency.

She looks at him with her sphinx-like eyes; she has a great inclination to burst out laughing at his comical face, his despairing gestures, his outstretched arms, to laugh and also to cry wildly and loudly.

"What are we to do, excellency, what are we to do?"

The town is too far away; there is no time to send there before dinner and, for the matter of that, they never have anything in the town. Besides, it is really the steward's fault, excellency; the steward should have told her excellency....

"There are larks," she says.

"Those were to go to Lipara to-morrow, excellency, to his excellency the duke!"

The duchess shrugs her shoulders, laughing a little:

"It can't be helped, my friend. His imperial highness the Duke of Xara comes before his excellency, does he not? Make a chaufroid of larks."

Yes, that is what he had thought of doing, but he had not ventured to suggest it. Yes, that would do very well, admirably, excellency.

She gives another little laugh and then nods, to say that he can go. The cook, evidently relieved, bows and disappears. She rises, looks at herself in a mirror as she stands erect in her lazily creased folds of pink and salmon-colour and old lace, stretches her arms with a gesture of utter fatigue and rings for her maid, after which she enters her dressing-room. Does she want to laugh again ... or to cry again? She does not know; but she does know that she has to get dressed.... Whatever confront a person, love or ortolan-pasty, that person must dress, must dress and eat and sleep ... and after that the same again: dress ... and eat ... and sleep....

2

Three carriages, with postillions, bring Othomar, Herman and the others along the broad, winding, switchback road to Castel Vaza. It is five o'clock in the afternoon; the weather is mild and sunny, but not warm: a fresh breeze is blowing. The landscape is wide and noble; with each turn of the road come changes in the panorama of snow-clad mountains. The country is luxuriantly beautiful. The little villages through which they drive look prosperous: they are the duke's property. Between Vaza and the castle the land has been spared by the water: the overflowing of the Zanthos has inundated rather the eastern district. It is difficult here to think constantly of that dreadful flood and of the condition of Lipara yonder, which the emperor has proclaimed in state of siege. It is so beautiful here, so full of spring life; and the sunset after a fine, summery day is here devoid of sadness. The chestnut-trees waft their fresh green fans; and the sky is still like mother-of-pearl, though a dust of twilight is beginning to hover over it. A lively conversation is in progress between the princes, Ducardi and Von Fest, who sit in the first carriage: they talk with animation, laugh and are amused because the villagers sometimes, of course, salute them, as visitors to the castle, with a touch of the cap or a kindly nod, but do not know who they are. Prince Herman nods to a handsome young peasant-girl, who stays staring after them open-mouthed, and recalls the delightful big-game hunt last year when he was the duke's guest, together with the emperor and Othomar. They did not see the duchess that time: she was unwell.... General Ducardi tells anecdotes about the war of fifteen years ago.

And they all find some difficulty in fixing their faces in official folds when they drive through the old, escutcheoned gate over the lowered drawbridge into the long carriage-drive and are received by the chamberlain in the inner courtyard of the castle. This is prescribed by etiquette. The duchess must not show herself before the chamberlain, surrounded by the duke's whole household, has bidden the Duke of Xara welcome in the name of his absent master and offered the crown-prince a telegram from Lipara, which the steward hands him on a silver tray. This telegram is from the Duke of Yemena; it says that his service and that of his son, the Marquis of Xardi, about the person of his majesty the emperor, the Duke of Xara's most gracious father, prevent them from being there to receive their beloved crown-prince in their castle, but that they beg his imperial highness to look upon the house as his. The prince reads the telegram and hands it to his aide-de-camp, the Count of Thesbia. Then, conducted by the chamberlain, he ascends the steps and enters the hall.

Notwithstanding that it is still daylight outside, the hall is brilliantly lighted and resembles a forest full of palm-trees and broad-leaved ornamental plants. The duchess steps towards the crown-prince and breaks the line of her graciousness in a deep curtsey. He has seen her bow like this before. But perhaps she is still handsomer in this plain black velvet gown and Venetian lace, cut very low, her splendid bosom exposed, white with the grain of Carrara marble, her statuesque arms bare, a heavy train behind her like a wave of ink; a small ducal coronet of brilliants and emeralds in her hair, which is also black, with a gold-blue raven's glow.

She bids the princes welcome. Othomar offers her his arm. Prince Herman and the equerries follow them up the colossal staircase, through the hedge of flunkeys, who stand motionless with fixed eyes that do not seem to see. Then through a row of lighted rooms and galleries to a great reception-room, glittering with light from the costly rock-crystal chandelier, in which the candle-light coruscates and casts expansive gleams and shimmers over the marble mosaic of the floor and along the decorative mirrors, in their frames of heavy Louis-XV. arabesques, and the paintings by renascence masters on the walls.

A momentary standing reception is held, a miniature court: in their dazzling uniforms—for it was a delightful, though long drive from Vaza and the men had had time to change into their full-dress uniforms in the town—the equerries and aides come, one after the other, to kiss the duchess' hand; except the Gothlandic officers, she knows them all, nearly all intimately; she is able to speak an almost familiar word to each of them, while the gold of her voice melts between her laughing lips and her great, Egyptian eyes look out, strangely dreaming. So she stands for a moment as a most adorable hostess between the two princes, she, a woman, alone among these officers who surround them, in the midst of a cross-fire of compliments and badinage that sparkles around them all. Then the steward appears, while the doors open out and the table is revealed brightly glittering, and bows before his mistress as a sign that she is served. The duchess takes the crown-prince's arm; the gentlemen follow.

The dinner is very lively. They are an intimate circle, people accustomed to meet one another every day. The duchess sees that an easy tone is preserved, one of light familiarity, which restrains itself before the crown-prince, yet gives a suggestion of the somewhat cavalier roughness and sans-gÊne that is the fashionable tone at court. The Gothlandic officers are evidently not in the secret; Von Fest, a giant of a fellow, looks right and left and smiles. For the rest, the duchess possesses this smart, informal manner in a very strong degree, but moderates herself now, although she does sometimes lean both her shapely elbows on the table. The crown-prince once more has that indescribable stiffness which makes things freeze around him; the ease which he displayed at Altara has again made way for something almost constrained and at the same time haughty; his smiles for the duchess are forced; and the handsome hostess in her heart thinks her illustrious guest an insufferable prig.

Possibly Othomar behaves as he does because of the conversations, which all focus themselves about the duchess and concern the gossip of the Imperial; the inundations are hardly mentioned, hardly either the state of siege in the capital; only a single word now and again recalls them. But for the greater part all this seems to be forgotten here, in these delightful surroundings, at this excellent dinner, under the froth of the soft gold lycilian from the duke's private vineyard. This lycilian is celebrated and they also celebrate it now: even the crown-prince touches glasses with the duchess with a courteous word or two, which he utters very ordinarily, but which they seem to think a most witty compliment, for they all laugh with flattering approbation, with glances of intelligence; and the duchess herself no longer thinks him so insufferable, but beams upon him with her full and radiant laugh. But what has he said? He is astounded at himself and at their laughter. He intended nothing but a commonplace; and....

But he remembers: it is always like that; and he now understands. And he thinks them feeble and turns to Ducardi and Von Fest; he forces the conversation and suddenly begins to talk volubly about the condition of the town of Vaza, which also has suffered greatly. Then about Altara. He gives the duchess a long description of the bursting of the Therezia Dyke. The duchess thinks him a queer boy; for an instant she fancies that he is posing; then she decides that for some reason or other he is a little shy; then she thinks that he has fine, soft eyes, looking up like that under his eyelids, and that he has a pleasant way of telling things. She turns right round to him, forgets the officers around her, asks questions and, with her elbows on the table and a goblet of lycilian in her hand, she listens attentively, hangs on the young imperial lips and feels an emotion. This emotion comes because he is so young and august and has those eyes and that voice. She is attracted by his hands, with their broad, delicate shape, as of an old strength of race that is wearing out; she notices that he looks now and then at his ring. And, becoming serious, she talks of the dreadful times, of all those thousands of poor people without a roof over their heads, without anything.... This is, however, only the second moment that she has thought of those thousands; the first was that short half-hour when the duke's chaplain was asking her for money and how she wished it bestowed.... She remembers that, at the time of this conversation with the chaplain, a cutter from Worth's was waiting for her to try on the very dress which she is now wearing and she thinks that life's accidents are really most interesting. She knows, in her inner consciousness, that this philosophy is as the froth of champagne and she herself laughs at it. Then she again listens attentively to Othomar, who is still telling of the nocturnal watch in St. Therezia's Church. The officers have grown quiet and are listening too. His imperial highness has made himself the centre of conversation and dethroned the duchess. She has noticed this too, thinks it strange of him but nice, above all does not know what she wants of him and is charmed.

3

After dinner a cosy gathering in two small drawing-rooms. One of them contains a billiard-table; and the duchess herself, gracefully pointing her cue, which she holds in her jewelled fingers, plays a game with Prince Herman, Leoni and young Thesbia. Sometimes, in aiming, she hangs over the green table with an incredible suppleness in her heavy lines; and the beautiful Carrara breast heaves the Venetian lace and the black velvet up and down at each rapid movement. In the other room, under a lamp of draped lace, Othomar and General Ducardi and the Gothlandic equerries are attentively engaged in studying on an accurately detailed ordnance-map the route which they are to follow to-morrow on horseback to the inundated villages. The steward and a footman go round with coffee and liqueurs.

When the game of billiards is over, the duchess comes into the next room with her gentlemen, laughing merrily. The prince and his officers look up, politely smiling, from their map, but she, bewitchingly:

"Oh, don't let me disturb you, highness!..."

She takes Dutri's arm for a stroll on the terrace outside. The doors are open, the weather is delicious: it is a little cool. The steward hangs a fur cloak over her bare shoulders. On the long terrace outside she walks with Dutri to and fro, to and fro, constantly passing the open doors and as constantly throwing a glance to the group under the lamp: bent heads and fingers that point with a pencil. Her step is light on the arm of the elegant equerry; her train rustles gaily behind her. She talks vivaciously, asks Dutri:

"How are you enjoying your tour?"

"Bored to death! Nothing and nobody amusing, except the primate's secretary!... Those Gothlanders are bores and so terribly provincial! And it's tiring too, all this toiling about! You see, I look upon it as war and so I manage to carry on; if I were to look upon it as times of peace, I should never pull through. Fortunately our reception has been tolerably decent everywhere. Oh, there is no doubt the crown-prince is making himself popular...."

"A nice boy," she says, interrupting him. "I had hardly seen him for a long time since, when he was studying at Altara; after that I only remember seeing him once or twice at the Imperial, shot up from a child like an asparagus-stalk and yet a mere lad. I remember it still: he flushed when I curtseyed to him. Then again lately, at Myxila's...."

Dutri is very familiar with the duchess: he calls her by her Christian name, he always flirts with her a little, to amuse himself, from swagger, without receiving any further favours; they know each other too well, they have been in each other's confidence too long and she looks upon him more as a cavaliere servente for trifling services and little court intrigues than as one for whom she could ever feel any sort of "emotion."

"Ma chÈre Alexa, take care!" says he, wagging his finger at her.

"Why?" she retorts, defiantly.

"As if I did not see...."

She laughs aloud:

"See what you please!" she exclaims, indifferently, with her voice of rough sans-gÊne, which is in fashion. "No, my dear Dutri, you needn't warn me, I assure you! Why, my dear boy, I have two girls to bring out next year! In two years' time I may be a grandmamma. I have given up that sort of thing. I can't understand that there are women so mad as always to want that. And then it makes you grow old so quickly...."

Dutri roars; he can't restrain himself, he chokes with laughing....

"What are you laughing at?" she asks.

He looks at her, shakes his head, as though to say he knows all about it:

"Really, there's no need for you to play hide-and-seek like that with me, Alexa. I know as well as you do ... that you yourself are one of those mad women!..."

He bursts out laughing again; and this time she joins in:

"I?"

"Get out! You want that as much as you want food and sleep at regular intervals. You would have been dead long ago, if you had not had your periodical 'emotions'. And, as to growing old, you know you hate the very thought of it!"

"Oh no! I do what I can to remain young, because that's a duty which one owes to one's self. But I don't fight against it. And you shall see, when the time comes, that I shall carry my old age very gracefully...."

"As you carry everything."

"Thanks. Look here: when I begin to go grey, I shall put something on my hair that will make me grey entirely and I will powder it, do you see? That's all!"

"A good idea...."

"Dutri...."

He looked at her, understood that she wanted to ask him something. They walked on for an instant silently, in the dark; constantly walking to and fro, they each time passed twice through the light that fell in two wide patches through the doors on to the terrace. The park was full of black shadow and the great vases on the terrace shone vaguely white; above, the sky hung full of stars.

"What did you want to ask me?" asked the equerry.

She waited till they had passed through the light and were again walking in the darkness:

"Do you ever hear of him now?"

"Thesbia had a letter from him the other day, from Paris. Not much news. He's boring himself, I believe, and running through his money. It's the stupidest thing you can do, to run through your money in Paris. I think Paris a played-out hole. Of course it couldn't be anything else. A republic is nothing at all. So primitive and uncivilized. There were republics before the monarchies: Paradise, with Adam and Eve, was a republic of beasts and animals; Adam was president...."

"Don't be an idiot. What did he write?"

"Nothing particular. But what a mad notion of his, to send in his papers as captain of the guards! How did he come to do it? Tell me, what happened between you two?"

They were walking through the light again and she did not answer; then, in the darkness:

"Nothing," she said; and her voice no longer had that affected smartness of brutality and sans-gÊne, but melted in a plaintive note of melancholy.

"Nothing?" said Dutri. "Then why...?"

"I don't know. We had talked a great deal together and so gradually began to feel that we could no longer make each other happy. I really can't remember the reason, really I can't."

"A question of psychology therefore. This comes of all that sentiment. You're both very foolish. Meddling with psychology when you're in love is very imprudent, because then you start psychologizing on yourselves and cut up your love into little bits, like a tart of which you are afraid you won't be able to get enough to eat. Practise psychology on somebody else, that's better: as I do on you, Alexa."

"Come, don't talk nonsense, Dutri. Don't you know anything more about him?"

"Nothing more, except that he has made himself impossible for our set. And that perhaps through your fault, Alexa, and through your psychology."

She walked silently, leaning on his arm; her mouth trembled, her Egyptian eyes grew moist:

"Oh!" she said; and she suddenly made the equerry stand still, grasped his arm tightly and looked him straight in the face with her moist eyes. "I loved him, I loved him, as I have never loved any one! I ... I still love him! If he were to write me one word, I should forget who I was, my husband, my position, I should go to him, go to him.... Oh, Dutri, do you know what it means, in our artificial existence, in which everything is so false around you, to ... to ... to have really loved any one? And to know that you have that feeling as a sheer truth in your heart? Oh, I tell you, I adore him, I still adore him ... and one word from him, one word...."

"Lucky that he's more sensible than you, Alexa, and will never say that word. Besides, he has no money: what would you do if you were with him? Go on the stage together? What a volcano you are, Alexa, what a volcano!"

He shook his foppish, curly head disapprovingly, adjusted the heavy tassels of his uniform. She took his hand, still serious, not yet relapsing into her tone of persiflage:

"Dutri, when you hear from him, will you promise to tell me about him? I sometimes hunger for news of him...."

She looked at him with such intense, violent longing, with such hunger, that he was startled. He saw in her the woman prepared to do all things for her passion. Then he smiled, flippant as always:

"What silly creatures you all are! Very well, I promise. But let us go in now, for the geographical studies seem to be finished and I am dying for a cup of tea...."

They went indoors. Busying herself at the tea-table, letting her fingers move gracefully over the antique Chinese cups, she straightway asked the crown-prince which road his highness proposed to take, feeling great concern about the inundated villages, the poor peasants, agreeing entirely in all things with the Duke of Xara, bathing in the sympathy which she gathered from his sweet, black, melancholy eyes—eyes from which she felt tempted to kiss all the melancholy away—bathing in his youthful splendour of empire....

Dutri helped her to sugar the tea. He watched her with interest: he knew her fairly well, she retained very little enigma for him; yet she always amused him and he always found in her a fresh subject for study.

4

It was one of the historic apartments of Castel Vaza, an ancient, sombre room in which the emperors of Liparia who had been guests of the dukes of Yemena had always slept on an old, gilt bed of state, raised five steps from the floor, a bed around which the heavy curtains of dark-blue brocade and velvet hung from an imperial crown borne by cherubs. On the walls were portraits of all the emperors and empresses who had rested there: the dukes of Yemena had always been much loved by their sovereigns and the pride of the ducal family was that every Liparian emperor had been at least one night its guest. Historical memories were attached to every piece of furniture, to every ornament, to the gilt basin and the gilt ewer, to everything; and the legends of his house rose one by one in Othomar's mind as he stretched himself out to rest.

He was very weary and yet not sleepy. He felt a leaden stiffness in his joints, as though he had caught cold, and a continuous shiver passed through his whole body, a mysterious quivering of the nerves, as if he were a tense string responding to a touch. The week spent at Altara, the subsequent five days at Vaza, the drives in the environs had tired him out. During the day he could not find a moment's time to yield to this fatigue, but at night, as he lay stretched for rest, it shattered him, without being followed by a healthy sleep.

He was used to his little camp-bed, on which he slept in his austere bedroom at the Imperial, the bed on which he had slept since childhood. The state-beds, at the Episcopal, at Vaza and now here, made him feel strange, laid-out and uncomfortable. His eyes again remained open, following the folds of the tall curtains, seeking to penetrate the shadows which the faint light of a silver lamp drove creeping into the corners. He began to hear a loud buzzing in his ears.

And he thought it curious to be lying here on this bed on which his ancestors had already lain before him. They all peered at him from the eight panels in the walls. What was he? An atom of life, a little stuff of sovereignty, born of them all; one of the last links of their long chain, which wound through the ages and led back to that mysterious, mystical origin, half-sacred, half-legendary, to St. Ladislas himself.... Would that same thing come after him also, a second chain which would wind into the future? Or...? And to what purpose was the ever-returning, endless, eternal renascence of life? What would be the end, the great end?...

Suddenly, like a vision, the night on the Therezia Square recurred to his mind, the thundering salute from the fort, thrice repeated, and the mighty, roaring onslaught of an approaching blackness, resembling a sea. Was it only a humming in his ears, or ... or was it really roaring on again? Did the black future come roaring on, in reply to his question as to the end, the great end, with the same sound of threatening waters which nothing could withstand? It burst through dykes; it dragged with it all that was thrown up as a protection, inexorable, and—with its grim, black, fateful frown and the sombre pleats of its inundations, which resembled a shroud trailing over everything that was doomed—it marched to where they stood, his kin, on their high station of majesty by the grace of God and of St. Ladislas; to where his father sat, on their age-old throne, crowned and sceptred and bearing the orb of empire in his imperial palm; and it did not seem to know that they were divine and sacred and inviolate: it seemed to care for nothing in its rough, sombre, indifferent, unbelieving, roaring profanation; for suddenly, fiercely, it dragged its black waves over them, dragged them with it—his father, his mother, all of them—and they were things that had been, they of the blood imperial, they became a legend in the glory of the new day that rose over the black sea....

His ancestors stared at him and they seemed to him to be spectres, themselves legends, falsities against which tradition would no longer act as a protection. They seemed to him like ghosts, enemies.... He opened wider his burning eyes upon their stiff, trained and robed or harnessed figures, which seemed to step towards him from the eight panels of the walls, in order to stifle him in their midst, to oppress him in a narrow circle of nightmare on his panting breast, with iron knees forcing the breath out of his lungs, with iron hands crushing his head, from which the sweat trickled over his temples.

Then he felt afraid, like a little child that has been told creepy stories, afraid of those ghosts of emperors, afraid of the glimpses of visions which again flashed pictures of the inundations before him: the meadow with the corpses, the men in the punt fishing up the woman. The corpses began suddenly to come to life, to burst out laughing, with slits of mouths and hollow eyes, as though they had been making a fool of him, as though there had been no inundations; and the dusk of the bed-chamber, filled with emperors, pressed down upon him as with atmospheres of nitrogen.

"Andro! Andro!" he cried, in a smothered utterance and then louder, as though in mortal anguish, "Andro! Andro!..."

The door at the end of the room was thrown open; the valet entered, alarmed, in his night-clothes. The reality of his presence broke through the enchantment of the night and exorcized the ghosts back into portraits.

"Highness!..."

"Andro, come here...."

"Highness, what's the matter?... How you frightened me, highness! What is it?... I thought...."

"What, Andro?"

"Nothing, highness. Your voice sounded so terribly hoarse! What's the matter?..."

"I don't know, Andro: I am ill, I think; I can't sleep...."

The man wiped Othomar's clammy forehead with a handkerchief:

"Will your highness have anything to drink? A glass of water?..."

"No, thank you, thank you.... Andro, can you come and sleep in here?"

"If you wish it, highness...."

"Yes, here, at the foot of my bed. I believe I'm not very well, Andro.... Bring your pillow in here."

The man looked at him. He was not much older than his prince. He had waited on him from childhood and worshipped him with the worship of a subject for majesty; he felt wholly bound to him, tied to him; he knew that the prince was not strong, but also that he never complained....

Growing suddenly angry, he turned to go to his room and fetch his pillow:

"No wonder, when they fag and tire you like this!" he cried, unable any longer to restrain his fury. "General Ducardi no doubt thinks that you have the same tough hide as himself!"

Muttering in his moustache, he went away, returned with his pillow and laid it on the step of the bed of state:

"Are you feverish?" he asked.

"No ... yes, perhaps a little. It will pass off, Andro. I ... I am...."

He dared not say it.

"I am a little nervous," he continued; and his eyes went anxiously round the room, where the emperors were once more standing quiet.

"Would you like a doctor fetched from Vaza?"

"No, no, Andro, by no means. What are you thinking of, to make such a disturbance in the middle of the night? Go to sleep now, down there...."

"Will you try to sleep also then, my 'princie'?" he asked, with the endearing diminutive which in his language sounded like a caress.

Othomar nodded with a smile and suffered him to shake up his pillows after the manner of a nurse.

"What a bed!" muttered Andro. "It might be a monument in a cemetery!..."

Then he lay down again, but did not sleep; he stayed awake. And, when Othomar asked, after an interval:

"Are you asleep, Andro?"

"Yes, your highness," he answered, "nearly."

"Is there anything murmuring in the distance? Is it water or ... or is it my fancy?"

The man listened:

"I can hear nothing, highness.... You must be a little feverish."

"Take a chair and come and sit by the head of the bed...."

The man did as he was told.

"And let me feel you near me: give me your hand, so...."

At last Othomar closed his eyes. In his ears the buzzing continued, still continued.... But under the very buzzing, while the lightness in his head lifted like a mist, the Crown-prince of Liparia fell asleep, his clammy hand in the hard hand of his body-servant, who watched his master's restless sleep in the quivering round the mouth, the jerking of the body, until, to quiet him, he softly stroked the throbbing forehead with his other hand, muttering compassionately, with his strange, national voice of caress:

"My poor princie!..."

The dawn rose outside; the daylight seemed to push the window-curtains asunder.

5

The next morning the duchess was to preside at the breakfast-table: she was in the dining-room with all the gentlemen when Othomar entered, as the last, with Dutri. His uniform of blue, white and silver fitted him tightly; and he saluted, smilingly, but a little stiffly, while Herman shook hands with him and the others bowed, the duchess curtseying deeply.

"How pale the prince looks!" Leoni said to Ducardi.

It was true: the prince looked very pale; his eyes were dull, but he bore himself manfully, ate a little fish, trifled with a salmi of game. Yet the prince's fatigue was so evident that Ducardi asked him, softly, across the table:

"Is your highness not feeling well?..."

All eyes were raised to Othomar. He wished to give the lie to their sympathy:

"I'm all right," he replied.

"Did your highness have a bad night?" continued Ducardi.

"Not very good," Othomar was compelled to acknowledge, with a smile.

The conversation continued, the duchess gave it a new turn; but after breakfast, on the point of departure—the horses stood saddled in the courtyard—Ducardi said, bluntly:

"We should do better not to go, highness."

Othomar was astonished, refused to understand.

"You look a little fatigued, highness," added Ducardi, shortly; and, more softly, deprecatingly, "And it's not surprising either, that the last few days have been too much for you. If your highness will permit me, I would recommend you to take a rest to-day."

Already a soft feeling of relaxation overcame the prince; he felt too much delighted at this idea of rest to continue his resistance. Yet his conscience pricked him at the thought of his father: a feeling of shame in case the emperor should hear of his exhaustion, which seemed so clearly evident.

And he absolutely insisted that the expedition should not be abandoned altogether. He yielded to Ducardi in so far as not to go himself and to take repose, provided that they thought he needed it; but he urgently begged Prince Herman and the others to follow the route planned out for that day and to go. And this he said with youthful haughtiness, already relieved at the thought of the day of repose before him—a whole day, unexpectedly!—but above all afraid of allowing his joy to be perceived and therefore sulking a little, as though he wished to go too, as though he thought General Ducardi foolish, with his advice....

The gentlemen went. The duchess herself conducted Othomar to the west wing, pressed him to rest in her own boudoir. Through the windows of the gallery Othomar saw Herman and the others riding away; he followed them for an instant with his eyes, then went on with the duchess and across the courtyard saw a groom lead back to the stables the horse that had been saddled for him, patting its neck. He was still disturbed by mingled emotions: the pleasant anticipation of resting, a little anxiety lest he should betray himself, a certain feeling of shame....

In the boudoir the duchess left him alone. It was quiet there; outside, the lordly fallow-deer grazed peacefully. The repose of the boudoir of a woman of the world, with the rich, silent drapery of silken stuffs, the inviting luxury of soft furniture, the calm brilliancy of ornaments each a costly object of art, surrounded him with a hushed breathlessness, like a haze of muslin, fragrant with an indefinable, gentle emanation, which was that woman's very perfume. The indolence of this present moment suddenly overwhelmed Othomar, a little strangely, and dissolved his thoughts in gentle bewilderment. He felt like a runaway horse that has suddenly been pulled up and stands still.

He sat down for a minute and looked out at the deer. Then he rose, reflected whether he should ring and thought better to look round for himself. On the duchess' little writing-table—Japanese lacquer inlaid with mother-of-pearl landscapes and ivory storks—he found a sheet of paper, a pencil.

And he wrote:

"To HER MAJESTY ELIZABETH
"EMPRESS OF LIPARIA.
"CASTEL VAZA,
"—April, 18—.

"Pray do not be alarmed if the newspapers exaggerate and say that I am ill. I was a little fatigued and Ducardi advised me to rest to-day. Herman and the others have gone on; to-morrow I hope myself to lead our second expedition from here. The day after that we go to Lycilia.

"OTHOMAR."

Then he rang and, when the footman appeared:

"My valet, Andro."

In a few moments Andro appeared. "Ask for a horse, Andro," said Othomar, "ride to Vaza and dispatch this telegram as quickly as you can to her majesty the empress...."

Andro went out and the strange, indolent vacancy overcame Othomar once more. The sun shone over the park, the deer gleamed with coats like cigar-coloured satin. The last fortnight passed once more before Othomar's eyes. And it was as though, in the vistas of that very short past, he saw spreading out like one great whole, one vast picture of human distress, the misery which he had beheld and endeavoured to soften. And the great affliction that filled the land made his heart beat full of pity. A slack feeling of melancholy, that there was so much affliction and that he was so impotent, once more rose within him, as it never failed to do when he was alone and able to reflect. Then he felt himself small, insignificant, fit for nothing; and something in his soul fell feebly, helplessly from a factitious height, without energy and without will. Then that something lay there in despair and upon it, heavy with all its sorrow, the whole empire, crushing it with its weight.

Serious strikes had broken out in the eastern quicksilver-mines, beyond the Gigants. He remembered once making a journey there and suffering when he saw the strange, ashy-pale faces of the workmen, who stared at him with great, hollow eyes and who underwent a slow death through their own livelihood, in a poisonous atmosphere. And he knew that what he had then seen was a holiday sight, the most prosperous sight that they were able to show him; that he would never see the black depths of their wretchedness, because he was the crown-prince. And he could do nothing for them and, if they raised their heads still more fiercely than they were doing now, the troops, which had already started for the district, would shoot them down like dogs.

He panted loudly, as though to pant away the weight upon his chest, but it fell back again. The image of his father came before his mind, high, certain, conscious of himself, unwavering, always knowing what to do, confident that majesty was infallible, writing signatures with big, firm letters, curtly: "Oscar." Everything signed like that, "Oscar," was immaculate in its righteousness as fate itself. How different was he, the son! Then did the old race of might and authority begin to yield with him, as with a sudden crack of the spine, an exhaustion of the marrow?

Then he saw his mother, a Roumanian princess, loving her near ones so dearly; womanliness, motherliness personified, in their small circle; to the people, haughty, inaccessible, tactless as he was, unpopular, as he was, too, at least in Lipara and the southern part of the empire. He knew it: beneath that rigid inaccessibility she concealed her terror, terror when she sat in an open carriage, at the theatre, at ceremonial functions, or in church, or even at visits to charitable institutions. This terror had killed within her all her great love for humanity and had morbidly concentrated her soul, which was inclined by nature to take a wider outlook, upon love for that small circle of theirs. And beneath this terror hid her acquiescence, her expectation of the catastrophe, the upheaval in which she and hers were to perish!...

He was their son, the heir to their throne: whence did he derive his impotent hesitation, which his father did not possess, and his love for their people, which his mother no longer possessed? His ancestors he knew only by what history had taught him: in the earlier middle-ages, barbarian, cruel; later, displaying a refined sensuality; one monarch, a weakling, ruled entirely by favourites, a roi-fainÉant, under whom the empire had fallen a prey to intestinal divisions and foreign greed; afterwards, more civilized, a revival of strength, a reaction of progress after decline, followed by the glory and greatness of the empire to the present day.... To the present day: to him came this inheritance of greatness and glory. How would he handle it, how would he in his turn transmit it to his son?

Then he felt himself so small, so timid that he could have run away somewhither, away from the gaping eyes of his future obligations....

6

The luncheon had all the intimacy of a most charming tÊte-À-tÊte, served in the small dining-room, with only the steward waiting at table. The duchess enquired very sympathetically how Othomar was; the prince already felt really rested, showed a good appetite, was gay and talkative, praised the cook and the famous lycilian wine. When the duchess after luncheon proposed to him to go for a small excursion in the neighbourhood, he thought it an excellent idea. He himself wished to ride—he knew that the duchess was an excellent horsewoman—but Alexa dissuaded him, laughingly, said that she was afraid of General Ducardi, who had recommended the prince to rest, and thought that a little drive in an open carriage would be less tiring. She had remembered betimes that a riding-habit made her look old and heavy; and she was very glad when the prince gave way.

The weather had remained delightful: a mild sun in a blue sky. The landscape stretched wide, the mountains stood shrill and steep, pointing their ice-laden crests into the ether. The drive had all the charm of an incognito free from etiquette, with the prince, in his undress uniform, seated beside the duchess, in a simple, dark gown of mauve corduroy velvet, in the elegant, light victoria, on which the coachman sat alone, without a footman, setting the two slender bays briskly about. The sun gleamed in patches over the horses' sleek hides and cast its reflections in the varnish of the carriage, in the facets of the cut-glass lamps, on the coachman's tall hat and in the buttons of Othomar's uniform. All this sparkle scintillated with short, bright flashes; and thus, lightly flickering, the carriage glided along the road, through a couple of villages, whose inhabitants saluted their duchess, but did not know who the simple young officer was, sitting beside her. A breeze had dried away the dampness of the preceding days and light clouds of dust blew up from under the quick-rolling wheels.

The duchess talked fluently, of Lipara, the emperor, the empress. She possessed the tact of knowing intuitively what to say and what to speak about, when she was anxious to please. Her voice was a charm. She was sometimes capable of great simplicity and naturalness, generally when she was not thinking of making an impression. Intuitively she assumed towards the prince, to make him like her, that same simplicity which was her nature. It made her seem years younger: the smart brusqueness that was in fashion flattered her much less and made her appear older and even vulgar, whereas now she grew refined in the natural distinction of an ancient race. The little black veil on her hat hid the ugly wrinkles about her eyes, which gleamed through it like stars.

The prince remembered stories told by his equerries—including Dutri—about the duchess; he remembered names mentioned in a whisper. He did not at this minute believe in these slanders, as he considered them to be. Sensible as he was to sympathy, he was won over by hers, which he read in her intuitively; and it made him think well and kindly of her, as he thought of all who liked him.

The carriage had been going between terraces of vineyards, when suddenly, as though by surprise, it drove past a castle, half-visible through some very ancient chestnut-trees.

"What estate is that?" asked the prince. "Who are your neighbours, duchess?"

"No one less than Zanti, highness," replied the duchess: she shivered, but tried to jest. "Balthazar Zanti lives here, with his daughter."

"Zanti! Balthazar Zanti!" cried Othomar, in a tone of astonishment.

He stood up and looked curiously at the castle, which lay hidden behind the chestnut-trees:

"But how is it, duchess, that last year, when I was hunting here with the emperor, with the duke, I never heard of Prince Zanti or that he lived here?"

The duchess laughed:

"Presumably, highness, because the duke's covers lie in the opposite direction"—she made a vague gesture—"and you never drove past this way and because his majesty will never suffer the name of Balthazar Zanti to be uttered in his presence."

"But none of the equerries...."

The duchess laughed still more merrily, looked at the prince, who was also chuckling, and said:

"It is certainly unpardonable of them not to have informed you more fully of the curiosities in the province of Vaza. But ... now that I think of it, highness, it's quite natural. The castle was empty last year: Zanti was travelling about the country, making speeches. You remember, they were afterwards forbidden by law. His name, therefore, had no local significance here at the time...."

The prince was still staring at the castle, which never came fully into view, when the carriage, in a turn of the road, almost touched a little group as it drove past them, against the slope of a vineyard: an old man, a young girl, a dog. The girl was frail, slender, pale, fair-haired, dressed in furs in spite of the sun and retaining beneath them a certain morbid elegance; she sat on the grass, wearing a dark fur toque on her silvery fair hair; her long, white hand, ungloved, soothingly and insistingly patted the curly head of the retriever, which barked at the carriage. Next to her stood a tall, erect old man, looking eccentric in a wide, grey smock-frock: a grey giant, with a heavy beard and sombre eyes, which shone with a dull light from under the brim of a soft felt hat. The dog barked; the girl bowed—she recognized the duchess as a neighbour—without knowing who the prince was; the old man, however, looked straight before him, frowning and making no sign. The carriage rattled past.

"That was Zanti," whispered the duchess.

"Zanti!" repeated the prince. "And how long has he been living here?"

"Only a very short time: I believe the doctors think the air of Vaza good for his daughter."

"Was that young girl his daughter?"

"Yes, highness. I have seen her once before; she appears to be delicate."

"Prince Zanti, is he not?"

"Certainly, highness; but, by his own wish, Zanti quite plain.... Titles are all nonsense in the nineteenth century, highness."

She jested and yet felt a silent shudder, she knew not why. She thought it ominous that Zanti had come to live so near to Castel Vaza. Shivering, she gave a quick side-glance at the prince. She perceived a strange pensiveness drawing over his face like a shadow. Then, to change the conversation and to think no longer of that horrid man:

"You are looking much better, highness, than you did this morning. The air has done you good...."

She suppressed her shiver. The prince, on the other hand, remained strange: a sudden emotion seemed to be stirring within him. When they were back at the castle, in the boudoir, the duchess offered herself to make the prince a cup of tea. He stood looking out of the window at the deer, but, while she busied herself with the crested, gilt array of her tea-table, she saw him turn pale, white as chalk—as he had looked that morning—his eyes dilating strangely:

"What is the matter, highness?" she cried, in alarm, approaching him.

He turned towards her, tried to laugh:

"I beg your pardon, duchess; I am very discourteous ... to behave like this, but ... but that man took me by surprise." He laughed. "I did not know that he was here; and then the air ... that rarefied air...."

He put his hand to his forehead; she saw him grow paler, his blood seemed to be running out of him, he staggered....

"Highness!" she cried.

But Othomar, groping vaguely with his hand for a support, fell up against her; she caught him in her arm, against her bosom, mortally frightened, and saw that he had swooned. A thin sweat stood on his forehead; his eyes closed beneath their weary lids, as though they were dying away; his mouth was open without breathing.

The duchess was violently alarmed; she was mortally frightened lest anything serious should happen to the Duke of Xara, alone with her in the castle; she suddenly felt that the future of Liparia was entrusted to the support of her arms; she already saw the prince lying dead, herself disgraced at the Imperial.... All this flashed across her brain at the first moment. But she looked at him long; and a gentle expression overspread her face: pride, that the Duke of Xara lay there half-fainting on her shoulder, and sudden passion, containing much motherliness and pity, blended into a strange feeling in her soul. She softly smoothed back his hair, wiped his perspiring forehead with her handkerchief.... And the strange sensation became still stranger within her, intenser in its two constituent parts: intenser in pride, intenser in compassionate love, that of a mistress and mother in one. Then, with a smile, she pressed the handkerchief, lightly moistened with the imperial sweat, to her trembling lips. The soft aroma of the moisture seemed to intoxicate her with a fragrance of virile youth.... She thought of the letters and photographs in the silver casket with the turquoises. A deep melancholy, because of life, smarted through her soul; yet more of her memories seemed to fly away like dust. Then, refusing to yield any longer to this melancholy, she bent her head and, serious now, giving herself to the present, which revived her with new happiness, she pressed her lips, trembling still more than before, on Othomar's mouth. For a moment she lingered there; her eyes closed; then she gave her kiss.

They opened their eyes together, looked at each other. Earnestly sombre, almost tragically, she flashed her glance into his. He said nothing, remained gazing at her, still half in her arms. The colour came mantling back to his cheeks. Their eyes imbibed one another. He felt the unknown opening before him, he felt himself being initiated into the world of knowledge which he suspected in her and did not know of himself. But he felt no joy because of it; her eyes continued sombre. Then he merely took her hand, just pressed it in a solitary caress and said, his eyes still gazing into her deep, quiet, dark glances of passion, his features still rigid with surprise:

"I was feeling a little giddy, I fear, just now? Please forgive me, duchess...."

She too continued to look at him, at first sombrely, then in smiling humility. Her pride soared to its climax with one beat of its wings: the mouth of her future emperor was still sealed with her kiss! Her love touched her inner life as a wafting breeze skims over a lake, rippling its surface into utter silver with a single fresh gust and stirring it to its very depths; she worshipped him because of his youthful majesty, which so graciously accepted her kiss without further acknowledgment, because of his imperial candour, his boyish voice, his boyish eyes, the pressure of his hand: the only thing he had given her; and she experienced all this as a very strange, proud pleasure: the delight of assimilating that candid youth, that maiden manhood, as a magic potion that should restore her own youth to her.

They dined late that evening, as they had waited for Herman and the others. The conversation at table turned upon the condition of the lowlands, upon the peasants, who had lost their all. The duchess was silent; the conversation did not interest her, but her silence was smiling and tranquil.

That evening Othomar again studied the map with Ducardi, under the lace-covered lamp. The evening had turned cold, the terrace-doors were closed. The duchess did not feel inclined for billiards, but sat talking softly with Dutri in the second drawing-room. She looked superb, serene as a statue, in her dress of old lace, pale-yellow, her white bosom rising evenly with her regular breathing; a single diamond star gleamed in her front hair.

Othomar pointed with the pencil across the map:

"Then we can go like this, along this road.... Look, General Ducardi; look here, Colonel von Fest: this is where I drove this afternoon with the duchess; and here, I believe, is where Zanti lives. Did you know that?"

The officers looked up, looked down at the spot to which the crown-prince pointed, expressed surprise:

"I thought that he lived in the south, in Thracyna," said the young Count of Thesbia.

Othomar repeated what the duchess had told him.

"Zanti!" cried Herman. "Balthazar Zanti? Why, but then it is he!... I was talking this afternoon to a party of peasants; they told me of the new huts which a new landlord was fitting up in the neighbourhood, but they spoke in dialect and I could not understand them clearly; I thought they said Xanti and I never suspected that it could be Balthazar Zanti. So he's the man!"

"Huts?" asked Othomar.

"Yes, a village of huts, it seems; they said he was so rich and so generous and was housing I don't know how many peasants, who had lost all that they possessed."

"I now remember reading in the papers that Zanti had gone to live at Vaza," said Leoni.

"I should like to see those huts: we can take them on our way to-morrow," said Othomar.

General Ducardi compressed his bushy eyebrows:

"You know, highness, that his majesty is anything but enamoured of Zanti and is even thinking of exiling him. It would perhaps be more in accordance with his majesty's views to ignore what Zanti is doing here for the moment."

Othomar, however, was not disposed to yield to the general; a youthful combativeness welled in his breast.

"But, general, to ignore anybody's good work in these times is neither gracious nor politic."

"I am convinced that, if his majesty knew that Zanti was occupying his castle here, he would have specially requested your highness to hold no communication with the man," said Ducardi, with emphasis.

"I am not so sure of that, general," said Othomar, drily. "I believe, on the contrary, that, if his majesty knew that Zanti was doing so much for the victims of the inundations, his majesty would overlook a good deal of his amateur communism."

Ducardi gnawed his moustache with a wry smile:

"Your highness speaks rather light-heartedly of that amateur communism. Zanti's theories and practice are more than mere dilettantism...."

"But, general," rejoined Othomar, gently, "I really do not understand why Zanti's socialism need prevent us at this moment—I repeat, at this particular moment—from appreciating what he is doing, nor why it need interfere with our visiting his huts, considering that we have come to Vaza to inform ourselves of everything that concerns the inundations...."

Ducardi looked at him angrily. He was not accustomed to being contradicted like this by his highness. The others listened. The duchess herself, attracted by the discussion, amid which she heard Othomar's voice ringing with youthful authority, had approached with Dutri, curiously.

"To say the least of it, it could do no harm just to see those huts: I must grant my cousin as much as that, general," said Herman of Gothland, who was beginning to like Othomar.

Von Fest also supported this view, convincingly, roundly, honestly, thought that they could do no less, having regard to the victims whom Zanti had housed. Every one now gave his opinion: Leoni thought it impossible that the crown-prince should visit Vaza and not those huts; it would look as though his highness were afraid of a bugbear like Zanti. The fact that Othomar was contradicting Ducardi gave them all grounds for thwarting the old general, who hitherto had conducted the expedition with a sort of military tyranny which had frequently annoyed them. Even Dutri, who as a rule was rather indifferent, joined forces with them, cynically, his eyes gleaming because Ducardi for once was being put in his place. He winked at the duchess.

And only Siridsen and Thesbia took Ducardi's side, hesitating because the general declared with such conviction that the emperor's will would be different from his son's wish; especially Thesbia:

"I can't understand why the prince insists so," he whispered to the duchess in alarm. "Ducardi's right: you yourself know how the emperor loathes Zanti...."

The duchess shrugged her handsome shoulders with a smile, listening to Othomar, whom she heard defending himself, supported by ejaculations and nods from the others.

"Well," she heard Ducardi answer, drily, "if your highness absolutely insists that we should go to Zanti's, we will go; I only hope that your highness will always remember that I did not agree with you in this matter...."

The Duke of Xara now answered laughingly, was the first to make peace after this victory; and, as to the rest of the route to Lycilia, which they worked out on the map, he agreed with the general in everything, with little flattering intonations of approval and appreciation of his penetrating and practical judgement....

"He may not have the makings of a great commander," whispered Dutri to the duchess, "but he will turn out a first-rate little diplomatist...."

But Ducardi was inwardly very angry. For a moment he thought of ascertaining the emperor's wishes by a secret telegram, but he rejected this idea, as it would make a bad impression at the Imperial if the Duke of Xara were not left free in such an apparent trifle. He therefore only attempted, next morning, once more to dissuade Othomar from the visit, but the prince held firm.

"You seem very much opposed to this expedition, general," said Von Fest. "Isn't it really quite reasonable?"

"You don't know the prejudice his majesty has against that man, colonel," replied the general. "As I have told you before, his majesty is thinking of exiling him and is sure to do so when he hears that he has now shut himself in his castle, doubtless with the object of stirring up the peasantry, as he has already stirred up the workmen in the towns. The man is a dangerous fanatic, colonel: dangerous especially because he has money with which to put his visions into practice. He instigates the lower orders not to fulfil their military duties because it is written: 'Thou shalt not kill.' He looks upon marriage as a useless sacrament; and I have heard that his followers simply come to him and that he marries them himself, with a sort of blessing, which in its turn is based upon a text, I forget which. He is always writing socialistic pamphlets, which are promptly seized and suppressed, and he makes seditious speeches. And the man is even standing for the house of deputies!"

"One who abjures his title a member of the house of deputies!" smiled Von Fest.

"Oh, his doctrine swarms with such inconsistencies!" growled Ducardi. "He will tell you of course that, so long as there is nothing better than the house of deputies, he is content to be a member of it. And the crown-prince wants to take notice of what a man like that does!"

Von Fest shrugged his shoulders:

"Let him be, general. The prince is young. He wants to know and see things. That's a good sign."

"But ... the emperor will never approve of it, colonel!" thundered the general, with an oath.

Again Von Fest shrugged his shoulders:

"Nevertheless I should not dissuade him any longer, general. If the prince wants a thing, let him have it, it will do him good.... And, if he gets blown up by his father afterwards, that will do him good too, by way of reaction."

Ducardi looked him straight in the face:

"What do you think of our prince?" he asked, point-blank.

Von Fest returned the general's glance, smilingly, looking straight into his searching eyes. He was honest by nature and upright, but enough of a courtier to be able to dissimulate when he thought necessary:

"A most charming lad," he replied. "But life—or rather he himself—will have to change him very much if he is to hold his own ... later on."

The officers understood each other. Ducardi heaved a deep sigh:

"Yes, there are difficult times coming," he said, with an oath.

"Yes," answered the Gothlandic colonel, simply.

The princes mounted their horses in the courtyard; they took the same road along which Othomar had driven with the duchess the previous afternoon past Zanti's castle. Leoni had learnt where the huts lay; the mountains began to retreat, the road wound curve after curve beneath the trampling hoofs of the horses. Suddenly the Zanthos spread itself out on the horizon: the wide expanse of flooded water, one great lake under the broad, gleaming, vernal sky.

"That must be they," said Leoni.

His finger pointed to a hamlet of long wooden buildings, evidently newly built, smelling of fresh timber in the morning breeze. As they rode nearer, they saw carpenters and masons; a whole work-yard came into view, full of busy movement, with stacks of red bricks and piles of long planks. Singing was heard, with a pious intonation, as of psalms.

Ducardi, whose custom was always to ride in front, to the left of the crown-prince, deliberately reined in his horse, allowed the others to come up with him; Othomar perceived that he did not wish to act on this occasion. He thought it petty of the general and said to Thesbia:

"Ask if Zanti is here."

The aide-de-camp turned and put the question to a sort of foreman. None of the workpeople had saluted; the equerries doubted whether they had recognized the crown-prince. Yes, Zanti was there. Plain "Zanti." Very well, he would fetch him.

The man went. He was long away. Othomar, waiting with the others on horseback, already began to find his position difficult, lost his tact, assumed his stiff rigidity, talked in forced tones to Herman. He found it difficult to wait when one had never done so hitherto. It made him nervous and he made his horse, which was tugging at the reins with skittish movements of its head, nervous too and was already thinking whether it would not be better to ride on....

But just then Zanti, with the foreman who had called him, approached, slowly, making no effort to hurry. He looked under his hand from a distance at the group of officers on horseback, flashing in the sunlight; stood still; asked the foreman some question or other; looked again.

"The unmannerly fellow!" muttered Thesbia.

The aide-de-camp rode up to him angrily, spoke in a loud voice of his imperial highness the Duke of Xara; the duke wished to see the huts.

"They are not huts," said Zanti, in peevish contradiction.

"What then?" asked the aide, haughtily.

"Dwellings," answered Zanti, curtly.

Thesbia shrugged his shoulders with annoyance. But the crown-prince himself had ridden up and saluted Zanti before the latter had vouchsafed any greeting:

"Will your excellency give us leave to look at what you are doing for the victims of the inundations?" he asked, politely, gently, graciously.

"I'm not an excellency," muttered the grey-beard, "but, if you like to look, you can."

"We should like to," replied Othomar, a little haughtily, "but not unless we have your entire approval. You are the master on your own estate; and, if our visit is unwelcome, we will not force our presence on you."

Zanti looked him in the eyes:

"I repeat, if you like to look round, you can. But there is not much to see. Everything is so simple. We make no secret of what we do. And the estate is not mine: it belongs to all of them."

Othomar dismounted, the others followed; with difficulty Leoni and Thesbia found a couple of boys to hold the horses in return for a tip.

Othomar and Herman had already walked ahead with the old man:

"I hear that you are doing much good work to mitigate the disaster of the inundations," said Othomar.

"The inundation is not a disaster."

"Not a disaster!" asked Herman, surprised. "What then?"

"A just punishment of heaven. And there will be more punishments. We live in sinful times."

The princes exchanged a quick glance; they saw that the conversation would not go very easily.

"But the sinners whom heaven punishes you assist for all that, Mr. Zanti," said Herman. "For all these huts...."

"Are not huts. They are sheds, workshops or temporary dwellings. They will grow into a settlement, if such be God's will ... to enable men to live simply, by their work. Life is so simple, but man has made it so strange and complicated."

"But you take in the peasants who have lost their all through the inundations?" Herman persisted.

"I don't take them. When they feel their sins, they come to me and I save them from destruction."

"And do they not come to you also without feeling their sins, because they feel that they will get food and lodging for nothing?"

"They get no food and lodging for nothing: they have to work here, sir!" said the old man. "And perhaps more than you, who walk about in a uniform.... They are paid, according to the amount of work they do, out of the common fund. They are building here and I build with them. Do you see this tree here and this axe? I was employed in felling down this tree when you came and interrupted me."

"A capital exercise," said Herman. "You look a vigorous man."

"So you say you are forming a settlement here?" asked Othomar.

"Yes, sir. The cities are corrupt; life in the country is purifying. Here they live; farther on lies arable land, which I give them, and pasture-land; I shall buy cattle for them."

"So you are simply trying to recruit farmers here?" asked Herman.

"No, sir!" answered the grey-beard gruffly. "I recruit no farmers; they are not my farmers. They are their own farmers. They work for themselves and I am a simple farmer like them. We are all equal...."

"You are a simple farmer," Prince Herman echoed, "yet you live in a castle."

"No, young man," replied Zanti, "I do not live in a castle; I live here; my daughter lives there by herself. She is ill.... She would not be able to stand an alteration in her mode of life, or any deprivation. But she will not live long...."

He glanced up, looked at the Princes alternately, askance, almost anxiously:

"She is my only weakness, I think," he said, in a faint, deprecating voice. "She is my sin; I have called in doctors for her and believe in what they say and prescribe. You see, she would not be able to do it ... to follow me in all things, for she has too much of the past in her poor blood. For her, a castle and comfort are necessities, vital necessities. Therefore I leave her there.... But she will not live long.... And then I shall sell it and divide the money, every penny of it, among them all.... You see, that is my weakness, my sin; I am only human...."

The princes saw him display emotion; his hands trembled. Then he seemed to feel that he had already spoken to them too much and too long of what lay nearest to his heart, his sin. And he pointed to the buildings, explained their uses....

"I have read some of your pamphlets, Mr. Zanti," said the crown-prince. "Do you apply your ideas on matrimony here?"

"I apply nothing," the grey-beard growled, resuming his tone of contradiction. "I leave them free to do as they please. If they wish to get married according to your law, they can; but, if they come to me, I bless them and let them go in peace, for it is written, 'Again I say to you, that if two of you shall consent upon earth, concerning any thing whatsoever they shall ask, it shall be done for them by my father who is in heaven. For where there are two or three gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.'"

"And how do you rule so many followers?" asked Herman.

"I don't rule them, sir!" roared the old man, clenching his fists, his face red with fury. "I am no more than any of them. The father has authority in his own household and the old men give advice, because they have experience: that is all. Life is so simple...."

"As you picture it, but not in reality," objected Herman.

Zanti looked at him angrily, stopped still, to be able to talk with greater ease, and, passionately, violently, exclaimed:

"And do you in reality find it better than I picture it? I do not, sir, and I hope to turn my picture into reality. You and yours once, ages ago, made your picture reality; now it is the turn of us others: your reality has lasted long enough...."

Othomar, haughtily, tried to say something in opposition; the old man, however, suddenly turned to him and, gently though roughly, said, his penetrating, fanatical voice which made Othomar shudder:

"For you, sir, I feel pity! I do not hate you, although you may think I do. I hate nobody. The older I have grown, the less I have learned to hate, the more softness has entered into me. See here: I hear something in your voice and see something in your eyes that ... that attracts me, sir. I tell you this straight out. It is very foolish of me, perhaps, to talk like this to my future emperor. But it is so: something in you attracts me. And I feel pity for you. Do you know why? Because the time will come!"

He suddenly pointed upwards, with a strange impressiveness, and continued:

"The hour will come. Perhaps it is very near. If it does not come in your father's reign, it will come in your reign or your son's. But come it will! And therefore I feel pity for you. For you will not have enough love for your people. Not enough love to say to them, 'I am as all of you and nothing more. I will possess no more than any of you, for I do not want abundance while you suffer need. I will not rule over you, for I am only a human being like yourselves and no more human than you.' Are you more human? If you were more, then you would be entitled to rule, yes, then, then ... See here, young man: you will never have so much love for your people as to do all this, oh, and more still and more! You will govern and possess abundance and wage war. But the time will come! Therefore I have pity for you ... although I oughtn't to!"

Othomar had turned pale; even Herman gave a little shudder. It was more because of the oracular voice of the man who was prophesying the doom of their sovereignty than because of his words. But Herman shook off his shudder and, angrily, haughtily:

"I cannot say that you are polite to your guests, Mr. Zanti," he said. "I do not speak of his imperial highness...."

Zanti looked at Othomar:

"Forgive me," he said. "I spoke like that for your sake. Your eyes are like my daughter's. That's why I spoke as I did."

Herman burst out laughing:

"A valid reason, no doubt, Mr. Zanti."

Othomar, however, signed to him to cease his tone of persiflage and also with a glance restrained his equerries, who had listened to Zanti's oracular utterances in speechless indignation: the old man had addressed Othomar almost in a whisper. His last words, however, which resounded with emotion, changed this indignation into bewilderment, calmed their anger, made them regard the prophet as half a madman, whose treason the crown-prince was graciously pleased to excuse. And the officers looked at one another, raised their eyebrows, shrugged their shoulders. Dutri grinned. Othomar asked Zanti coolly whether they had not better proceed.

The settlement was very much in its first stage; yet a few farm-houses were beginning to rise up, chestnut-trees lay felled, hundreds of peasants were busily working.

The group of officers excited great curiosity; the princes had been recognized. On almost every side the people stopped work, followed the uniforms with their eyes.

The princes and their suite felt instinctively that a hostile feeling was passing through Zanti's peasants. When they asked a question here and there about the sufferings experienced, the answer sounded curt and rough, with a reference to the will of God, and was always like an echo of Zanti's own words. Pecuniary assistance seemed uncalled for. And Zanti had really nothing to show. The settlement made a poor impression on Othomar, perhaps because of a sort of mortified sovereignty. He was accustomed always to be approached with respect, as a future majesty; and his sensitiveness was more deeply wounded by Zanti's bluntness, by the surliness of Zanti's peasants, than he himself was willing to admit. He felt that at this spot they saw in him not the crown-prince who loved his people and wanted to learn how to succour them, but the son of a tyrant, who would act as a tyrant also when his turn came. He felt that, though Zanti called himself the apostle of peace, this peace was not in his disciples; and, when he looked into their rough, sullen faces, he saw hatred gleam luridly from deep, hollow eyes, as with sudden lightning-flashes....

The weight of it all fell heavily upon his chest; his impotence pressed with a world of inconsolable misery and unappeasable grief upon his shoulders, as though to bear him to the ground. It was the misery and grief not of one, but of thousands, millions. Vindictive eyes multiplied themselves around him in a ferment of hatred; each one of his people who asked happiness of him, demanding it and not receiving it, seemed to be there, staring at him with those wide eyes....

He felt himself turning giddy with an immense feeling of helplessness. He looked for nothing more, this was the end. And he was not surprised at what happened: the man with the brown, hairy, distorted face, who rushed upon him like a nightmare and laid hold of him, full of hatred. A foul, tobacco-laden breath swept over his face, a coarse knife in a coarse fist flashed towards his throat....

A cry arose. A shot rang out, sharp, determined, with no suspicion of hesitation. The man cursed out a hoarse yell, gnashing his teeth in revolt, and struggled, dying. His brains splashed over Othomar, soiling the prince's uniform. And the man plumped down at his feet on the ground, grown limp at once, with relaxed muscles, still clutching the knife in his hairy fingers. All this had happened in a single instant.

It was Von Fest who had fired the shot from a revolver. The colonel drew up his broad figure, looked around him, still held the revolver raised at a threatening slant. The people stood staring, motionless, perplexed by the sudden reality before their eyes.

Zanti, stupefied, gazed at the corpse; then he said, while the startled officers stood by in fussy confusion around the prince:

"Now go and, if you can, go in peace!..."

Full of bitterness, he pointed to the corpse. He shook his head, with the grey locks under the felt hat; tears sprang to the corners of his eyes.

"Thou shalt not kill!" they heard him mutter. "They seem not to know that yet; nobody knows it yet!..."

A strange, mad look troubled his normally clear, grey eyes; he seemed for a moment not to know what he should do. Then he went to a tree, caught up the axe and, without taking further notice of the princes, began to hew like a lunatic, blow upon blow....

The officers hurried to their horses. Dutri gave a last look back: near the corpse, now surrounded by peasants, he saw a woman standing; she sobbed, her desperate arms flung to heaven, she howled, she shook her fist at the equerry's turned face, screaming.

Othomar had said nothing. He heard the woman howling behind him. He quivered in every nerve. On the road, preparing to mount, Ducardi asked him, agitatedly:

"Shall we return to Castel Vaza, highness?"

The prince looked at the general haughtily. Quickly the thought flashed through him that the general had strongly opposed his coming here. He shook his head.

Then his eyes sought Von Fest: they glanced up at the colonel under their eyelids, deep-black, moist, almost reproachful.

But he held out his hand:

"Thank you, colonel," he said, in a husky voice.

The colonel pressed the hand which the prince offered him:

"Glad to be of service, highness!" he replied, with soldierly brusqueness.

"And now let us go on to the Zanthos," said Othomar, walking up to his horse.

But the old general could master himself no longer. In these last moments he had felt all his passionate love—seated hereditarily, firmly in his blood, of a piece with him, his very soul and all that soul—for the reigning house. His fathers had died for it in battle, without hesitation. And with the mad, wide embrace of his long, powerful old arms, he ran up to Othomar, grateful that he was alive, pressed him as if he would crush him against his breast, until the buttons of his uniform scratched Othomar's cheek, and cried, sobbing, under his trembling moustache:

"My prince, my prince, my prince!..."

8

The attempt on Othomar's life was known at Castel Vaza before the princes returned, from peasants of the duke's, who had told the castle-servants long stories of how the prince had been severely wounded. The duchess had at first refused to believe it; then, in rising anxiety, in the greatest tension and uncertainty, she had walked about the corridors. She had first tried to persuade herself that the people were sure to exaggerate. When she reflected that, in the event of Othomar's being wounded, the princes and the equerries would have returned at once, she became more tranquil and waited patiently.

But the chamberlain, who had been to Vaza, returned in dismay: people were very uneasy in the town, pressing round the doors of the newspaper-offices to read the bulletins, which mentioned the attempt briefly, with the provoking comment that further particulars were not yet to hand. The duchess realized that by this time the bulletin had also been telegraphed to Lipara; and she feared not only that Othomar had met with harm, but that she herself would lose favour with the empress....

When the duchess at last, after long watching from a window in the west corridor, saw the princes and their suite come trotting, very small, along a distant road, she could not restrain herself and went to meet them in the courtyard. But she saw that Othomar was unhurt. The Duke of Xara dismounted, smiled, gave her his hand; she kissed it, curtseying, ardently; her tears fell down upon it. The chamberlain approached, assured Othomar, in the name of all the duke's servants, of their heartfelt gratitude that the Duke of Xara had been spared, by the grace of God and the succour of St. Ladislas.

Ducardi had not been able to telegraph from anywhere before, but he now sent in all haste to Vaza with a message for the emperor, mentioning at the same time that the prince had calmly resumed the expedition immediately after the attempt upon his life. Dinner took place amid a babel of voices; the duchess was greatly excited, asked for the smallest details and almost embraced Von Fest. The crown-prince drank to his preserver and every one paid him tribute.

Afterwards Ducardi advised the crown-prince, in an aside, to retire early to rest. The general spoke in a gentle voice; it seemed as though the thought that he might have lost his crown-prince had made him fonder of him. Herman too pressed Othomar to go to bed.

He himself had grown calm, but a vague feeling of lassitude had come over all his being: he had even drunk Von Fest's health in a strangely weary voice. He now took their advice, withdrew, undressed himself; his soiled uniform, which he had changed before dinner, still hung over a chair; he shuddered to think that he had worn it the whole afternoon:

"Those things!" he said to Andro, who was still quite confused and, nervously weeping, was tidying up. "Burn them, or throw them away, throw them away."

Othomar flung himself in his dressing-gown on a couch in the room adjoining his bedroom. This was also an historical apartment, with tapestry on the walls representing scenes from the history of Lipara: the Emperor Berengar I., triumphantly riding into Jerusalem, with his crusaders holding aloft their white banners; the Empress Xaveria, seated on horseback in her golden armour before the walls of Altara, falling backwards, struck dead by a Turkish arrow....

The prince lay staring at them. A deadly calm seemed to make him feel nothing, care about nothing. In his own mind he reviewed the whole historical period from Berengar to Xaveria. He knew the dates; the scenes passed cloudily before his eyes as though tapestries were being unrolled, kaleidoscopically, with the faded colours of old artwork. He saw himself again, a small boy, in the Imperial, in an austere room, diligently learning his lessons; he saw his masters, relieving one another: languages, history, political economy, international law, strategy; it had all heaped itself upon his young brain, piled itself up, built itself up like a tower. By way of change, his military education—drilling, riding, fencing—conducted by General Ducardi, who praised him or grumbled at him, or growled at the sergeants who instructed him. He had never been able to learn mathematics, had never understood a word of algebra; in many subjects he had always remained weak: natural philosophy and chemistry, for instance. For a time he had taken great pleasure in the study of mineralogy and zoology and botany; and afterwards he had shown some enthusiasm for astronomy. Then came the university and his legal studies....

He remembered his little vanities as a child and as a boy, when in his ninth year he had become a lieutenant in the throne-guards; when later he had received the Garter from the Queen of England and the Black Eagle from the German Emperor and the Golden Fleece from the Queen-regent of Spain. With such minor vanity there had always been mingled a certain dread of possible obligations which the Garter or the Eagle might imply: obligations which hovered vaguely before his eyes, which he dared not define and still less ask about of Ducardi, of his father. Gradually these threatening obligations had become so heavy and now, now they were the weights that bore upon his chest....

The weights.... But he did not stir, feeling strangely calm. Then he thought of Von Fest, of the duchess.... Yesterday, her kiss.... He had lain swooning on her shoulder and she had kissed him and long watched him with passionate looks. And all those stories of the equerries....

Then it came as with a fierce wave foaming over his absolute calmness....

Why had that man hated him, tried to murder him, tried to slay him like a beast?... Pride welled up in him, pride and despair. The man had touched him, soiled him with his breath, him, the crown-prince, the Duke of Xara! He gnashed his teeth with rage. That was a thing which Berengar I. would never have suffered! Off with his head! Off with his head!... Oh, that populace which did not know, which did not feel, which pressed up against him, seething and foaming against the throne, which terrified his mother, however haughtily she might look beyond it into the distance, with her imperial composure!...

How he hated it, hated it, with all the hatred of his house for those who were now free and were yet once its slaves! How he would have them shot down, have them shot down when he came into power!...

He looked at Xaveria: she herself was shot down, the haughty amazon; backwards she fell, wounded by the arrow of a Turkish soldier. And he, that morning, if Von Fest had not....

He threw himself back wildly, buried his face in his hands and sobbed. No, no, oh no! He would not shoot them down, not kill them, not hate them! He was not like that: he might be like that for a moment, but he was not like that! He was fond of his people; he was so grateful when they rejoiced, when he was able to help them. Surely he would never have them shot on! He was only growing excited now. What was there in his soul for all of them, for those millions, of whom he had perhaps seen only a few thousands and knew only a few hundreds, but one great love, which threw out arms to them in every direction, to embrace them? Had he not felt this in that black night on the Therezia Square? Were hatred and violence his? No, oh no! He was soft, perhaps too soft, too irresolute, but he would grow older, he would grow stronger; he would wish to and he would make all of them happy. Oh, if they only cared for him, if they only loved him with their great mass of surging, black, frothing humanity, a sable Milky Way of swarming souls, each soul a spark, like his own; oh, if they only loved him! But they must not hate him, not look at him with those bloodshot eyes of hatred, not aim at his throat with those coarse, hairy fingers, not try to murder him, O God, not try to slay him like a bullock, with a common knife, him, their future sovereign!...

And he felt that they did not belong to him and did not know him and did not understand him and did not love him, all of them, and that they hated him merely out of instinct, because he was born upon the throne!

And his despair because of all this spanned out, immense, a desert of black night, which he felt eternities wide around him; and he sobbed, sobbed, like an inconsolable child, because this was as it was and would become more desperate with each day that brought him nearer to his future as emperor and to their future: the mournful day which would rise upon the destruction of the old world....

Then there came a knock at a little door; and the door was softly opened....

"Who's there?" he asked, startled, feeling the breach of etiquette, not understanding why Andro had not come through the anteroom to announce whoever it might be.

"If your highness permits me...."

He recognized the duchess' soft voice, rose, went to the door:

"Come in, duchess...."

She entered, hesitatingly; she had thrown a long cloak over her bare shoulders to go through the chilly passages of the castle....

"Forgive me, highness, if I intrude ... if I disturb you...."

He smiled, said no, apologized for his costume, feeling surprised and pleased....

She saw that his eyes were swimming with moisture:

"I am indiscreet," she said, "but I couldn't help it; I felt I must find out how you were, highness.... Perhaps I wished to surprise you as well: I don't quite know. Something impelled me: I could not help coming to you. You are my guest and my crown-prince; I longed to see for myself how you were.... Your highness bore up well at dinner, but I felt...."

Her voice flowed on, soft and monotonous, as though with drops of balsam. He asked her to sit down; she did so; he sat down by her side; the dark cloak slipped off and she was magnificent, with her white neck, siren-like in her opalescent, pale-green watered silk. He noticed that she had laid aside the jewels which she had worn at dinner.

"I wanted to come to you quietly, through that door," she resumed, "in order to tell you once more, to tell you alone, how unspeakably thankful I am that your highness' life has been preserved...."

Her voice trembled; her ebony glances grew moist; the light of the great candles in the silver candelabra shimmered over the silk of her dress, played with soft light and slumbering shadow in the modelling of her face, in the curve of her bosom.

He pressed her hand; she retained his:

"Was your highness crying when I came in?" she asked.

His tears were still flowing, a last sob heaved through his body.

"Why?" she asked again. "Or am I indiscreet?..."

He looked at her; at this moment he could have told her everything. And, though he contained himself, yet he gave her the essence of his grief:

"I was sad," he said, "because they seem to hate me. Nothing makes me so sad as their hatred."

She looked at him long, felt his sorrow, understood him with her feminine tact, with her courtier-like swiftness of comprehension, which had ripened in the immediate contact of her sovereigns. She understood him: he was the crown-prince, he must suffer his special princely suffering; he must drink an imperial cup of bitterness to the dregs. She remembered that she herself had suffered, so often and so violently, for love, passionate woman that she was; she understood that his suffering was different from hers, but doubtless more terrible, as it seized him already at so young an age and as it depended not upon his own single soul, but upon the millions of souls of his empire. She too had suffered because she had not been loved; he also suffered like that. And so in one instant she understood him quite entirely, with all her strange woman's heart.

A thrill of compassion welled up in her breast as a yet unknown delight and, like a fervent, gentle oracle, she uttered the words:

"They do not all hate you...."

He recognized her passionate glances of the day before. He remembered her kiss. He looked at her long, still hesitating a little in the presence of the unknown. Then he extended his arms and, with a dull cry of despair, hoarse with hunger for consolation, he called to her in his helplessness:

"Oh, Alexa!..."

She first smiled, with radiant eyes, then flung herself bodily into his young arms, crushing him against her bare breast. She felt like a maid and a mother in one. But, when he clung to her in a wild passion of despair, she felt herself to be nothing but a lover. She knew that he would be her last love. The knowledge made her proudly sad and diabolically happy. Her kisses clattered upon his eyes like hail....

And in their love, that night, they mingled the wormwood of what they both were suffering, each seeking consolation for life's sorrows in the other....

9

"To HIS IMPERIAL HIGHNESS THE DUKE OF XARA,
"LYCILIA.
"THE IMPERIAL,
"LIPARA,
"—April, 18—.

"MY DEAR BROTHER,

"I want to tell you before you read it in those tedious papers that our respected father and emperor this morning, on my tenth birthday, dubbed me a knight of St. Ladislas in the knights' hall of the palace. You can understand how proud I feel. I shall not tell you about the ceremony, because you will remember that yourself. I was very much impressed as I walked up to our father between all those tall knights in their blue mantles and knelt before his throne. I wore my new uniform of a lieutenant in the guards. The king-at-arms, the Marquis of Ezzera, held up the rule of the order on a cushion, on which I took the oath. I must have looked rather small with my little mantle: the cross of St. Ladislas was just as big on it, however, as on those of all the others. I felt that they were all looking over my head; and that is not a pleasant feeling when you are the hero of the day. But of course I am the youngest of the knights, so there is no harm in my being a little shorter. The sword our father gave me is also a little smaller than that of the other knights, but the hilt is rather pretty and blazes with precious stones. Still, I think I prefer the chasing on the scabbard of yours, but when I am eighteen—so in eight years from now!—I am to have another sword and of course another mantle too.

"Mamma was terribly alarmed and nervous when she heard of that man who attacked you and she wanted to have you recalled at once, because it did not seem safe where you are; and she simply could not understand that this could not be done. But safe: who is safe nowadays? One's not safe in war either and not even here in the Imperial. One shouldn't think so much of all that safety, that's what I say; but of course mamma is a woman and therefore she thinks differently from what we do. The riots and the martial law also upset her, but I think it rather jolly: everything's military now, you know. That Von Fest is a fine fellow. I should like to shake hands with him and to thank him myself; but, as I can't, I beg you particularly to do so for me and on no account to forget it. You have heard, no doubt, through General Ducardi, that papa is going to make Von Fest a commander of the Imperial Orb. What a pity that we can't create him a knight of St. Ladislas, but for that of course he would have to be a Liparian and not a Gothlander.

"Now, dear brother, I must finish, because Colonel Fasti is expecting me for my fencing-lesson. Give my very kindest regards to Herman and General Ducardi and remember me to the others; and accept for yourself the fond embrace of your affectionate brother,

"BERENGAR,
"Marquis of Thracyna
"(Knight of St. Ladislas)."

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