Chapter V (2)

Neither the empress nor the prince himself thought it a favourable moment to communicate the mournful resolution to the emperor. But for this very reason the empress began silently to cherish fresh hope. Nothing had been said yet: the humiliating secret existed only between her son and herself. Humiliating, because what public reason could he allege for resigning the succession? What pretext would sound plausible enough to conceal the true motive of weakness and impotence? And yet he was her child and Oscar's! It seemed to the empress unfeasible to communicate Othomar's wish to his father and to tell the emperor that his own son had no capacity for government. Oh, what sacrifice would she not be prepared to make, if only she could spare her child this humiliation! But was he really so powerless to master himself and to draw himself up, proudly, under the weight of what was as yet no more than a prince's coronet? Had she but known how to counteract his discouragement; but she had merely sobbed, merely given way before his despair; in vain had she sought in his soul the secret spring that should cause him to rise from the impotence into which the languor of his reflections had made him sink.... And yet she felt that there must be a secret spring, because she instinctively divined its presence in the souls of all her equals: it was the mystery of their sovereignty, the reason why they were sovereigns, the reason of their prerogative. She possessed the adorable, child-like faith that in them, the crowned heads, there exists a common essence of distinction which raises them above the crowd: that single drop of sacred blood in their veins, that single atom of inherited divinity, which sheds lustre through their souls. She believed in their high exclusive right of majesty. Because she believed in that even as she believed in her sinfulness as a human being and in the absolution of her confessor, the Archbishop of Lipara, she could never for one instant doubt their right divine as rulers. Whatever people might think, or write, or want different, theirs was the right: of this she was certain, as certain as of the Trinity. That Othomar had doubted the existence of God had struck her as impious, but it had not shattered her so much as his disbelief in their right. Was he alone then lacking in that essence of distinction, that sacred golden drop of blood, that divine atom? And, if he lacked it, if he, the crown-prince, lacked majesty, was this monstrous lack her fault, the fault of the mother who bore him?

The suspicion of this guilt crushed her; and before she even dared to speak to Othomar she humbled herself before the archbishop. The prelate, alarmed at these portents in the mysterious melancholy of the Imperial, had scarcely known how to comfort her. After that, she remained prostrate for hours before her crucifix. She prayed with all her soul, prayed for light for herself and for her son, prayed for strength and that the spark might descend upon Othomar. When she had prayed thus, so long and with such conviction, there came over her, like an afflatus of the Holy Ghost, a sense of peace. She became herself again, she awaited events, regained her credulous fatalism, her conviction that nothing happens but what must happen and is right. What was wrong did not happen. If it were fated that Othomar must receive that spark, that would be right; if it were fated that he must abdicate, that would be right too, O God, right with a strange, inscrutable rightness!...

Because the days had passed without her having yet spoken to the emperor, she hoped anew; she hoped that Othomar would be his old self again and no longer seek his own degradation. But it was as though she hoped in spite of everything; for, each time that she now saw Othomar, she found him duller and more exhausted, more helpless beneath the certainty of his weakness. Professor Barzia, who treated the prince personally and twice a day gave him his cold-water douche in the palace, seemed to be least uneasy about Othomar's physical weakness. The prince was not robust, but the professor divined in his delicate constitution the presence of the element that had sprung from the first rough, sensual strength of the Czyrkiski race: the Slavonic element, which had become enervated through its Latin admixtures, but had lingered on; a secret toughness, an indestructible factor of unsuspected firmness, which lay deep down, like a foundation, and upon which much seemed to be built that was very slender and fragile. What had once been rude strength the professor believed he had discovered in a certain toughness; what had been cruelty and lust, in a certain enervation, which had hitherto been held in check by self-restraint and a spontaneous sense of duty, but which now suddenly revealed itself in this excessive lassitude. Barzia distinctly perceived in Othomar the scion of his ancestors; and he considered that, though the rich physical vigour of the original sovereign blood had become refined, as if it were now flowing more thinly through feebler veins, yet that blood was not so impoverished that the delicacy of this future emperor need be ascribed to racial exhaustion. Possibly Barzia's sudden affection for the prince tinged this physiological diagnosis with excessive optimism; at any rate, the professor had not the least fear of this fragility, or even of this nervous weakness. What he did fear was lest those mental qualities which had so suddenly endeared the prince to him should not be able to maintain themselves during this period of fatigue and exhaustion. Spontaneous, unreflected, uncalculated he knew those virtues to be in the prince, as it were a treasure unknown to himself: would they be lost, now, in these mournful days, or would they remain, perhaps develop, become more and more refined, make up to Othomar in moral strength for what he lacked in physical strength and in this way cure him? For the professor knew it: these qualities alone could effect a cure....

Othomar himself thought neither of his virtues nor of his blood: he thought of his future and thought of it with an hourly-increasing dread. When the empress asked Barzia whether this rest would be good for the prince and whether distraction would not be better, the professor declared that the prince had had plenty of distraction lately. He must first get over his fatigue, get over it entirely; it mattered less with what the prince kept his brain occupied for the moment....

But Barzia did not mean this altogether and would doubtless have been very far from meaning it at all, had he known of what the prince was thinking, or been fully able to judge his utter lack of mental elasticity.

And the days passed by. Othomar did not mention his resolution to the empress again, desiring to give her as little pain as possible; neither did the empress allude to it: she hoped on.

But in Othomar's meditations it revolved incessantly, like a wheel: he was able to do nothing for his people and yet he loved them; he did not know how to govern them, he would abdicate his rights and his title of crown-prince: Berengar should become Duke of Xara....

The small prince came and paid his brother a short visit every morning; he always wore his little uniform, looking like a sturdy little general in miniature, and Othomar watched him with a smile.

Was there no wish to rule in the boy's medieval little brain, was there no jealousy in his passionate little heart? Othomar remembered the history of Liparia, in the cruel times of their early middle-ages, that terrible drama--they still showed at St. Ladislas the chamber where it had been enacted--that second son stabbing his elder brother in his lust for the crown and hurling the corpse from an oriel window into the Zanthos, which flowed beneath the fortress. What had the boy inherited of this rivalry? And, though this rivalry had been wholly refined into less salient feelings, would not an immense happiness enter Berengar's small princely soul if he were to learn that he might be crown-prince now and that one day he would be ... emperor? But what would the boy think of him, Othomar, for giving away all this magnificence of his own free will? Would he despise him, while yet feeling grateful to him, or would he cherish mistrust, suspecting a lurking mystery behind all this greatness, which Othomar cast from him?...

At such times Othomar would draw the little fellow to him with silent compassion, but would take pleasure in feeling the firm muscles of his sturdy little arms and listening to his short, crisp little speeches. Then Berengar rode away and Djalo was allowed to run with him through the park: in an hour he would bring the dog back to Othomar and talk with great importance of his lessons, which were just beginning.

And, when Berengar had gone, Othomar lay thinking about him in his long hours of reverie, already looked upon his brother as actually crown-prince, erased his own name from the list of future sovereigns, thought of what he would do when he was cured and had shaken off the last remnant of his purple, remembered his uncle Xaverius, who was the abbot of a monastery, and pictured himself studying, compiling works on history and sociology....

5

These were autumn days. The sunny blue of the sky was often clouded with grey; in the morning the winds blew from the north, blew over the sea till it became the colour of steel; then the sun broke through and shone very warmly for a couple of hours, with an occasional cold blast, suddenly and treacherously rushing round the corners of the streets; then, at four or half-past four o'clock, the sun was extinguished and the pale sky was left exhaling its icy chillness on the open harbour, between the white palaces, in the streets and squares.

It was a treacherous time of year: the empress and Berengar had caught cold driving in an open carriage; they both kept their rooms and Othomar in his turn went to visit them; the empress was coughing, the little prince had a temperature; there was never so much illness about as now, the doctors declared. And a melancholy continued to brood through the halls of the Imperial, through the whole town, where the imperial family were no longer seen at the opera and at parties. Never had the daily dinners at the Imperial been so short, with so few guests; and it made an insurmountably sad impression not to see the empress seated next to the emperor, delicate, distinguished, august, but in her stead the Princess Thera, who seemed quite incapable of bringing a smile to Oscar's grim and peevish features.

Othomar did not even know that those about the empress were anxious on her behalf: she always received him with all the cheerfulness that she could muster, in spite of the pain on her chest; the doctors told him nothing, no one gave him the bulletins, every one tried to spare him; and besides there was really less anxiety in the Imperial than in the town and throughout the country. But the little prince received Othomar with less meekness than did the empress; and every day there were silent rages, sulking displays against the doctors for keeping him in bed.

Once, when the crown-prince came to see Berengar, the doctors were with him; the fever had increased, but the little prince wanted to get out of bed; he was naughty, used ugly names, had even struck the good-natured, big-headed doctor and pummelled him with his little clenched fist.

"As soon as you're better, Berengar," said Othomar, after first reproving him, "I shall make you a present."

"What of?" asked the boy, eagerly. "But I am better now!"

"No, no, you must do what the doctors tell you and not vex them."

"And what will you give me then?"

Othomar looked at him long and firmly.

"What shall I have then?" repeated the child.

"I mustn't tell you yet, Berengar; it's really rather big for you still."

"What is it then? A horse?"

"No, it's not as big as a horse, but heavier. Don't ask any more about it and also don't try and guess what it is, but be obedient: then you'll get better and then you shall have it."

"Heavier than a horse and not so big!..." Berengar pondered, with glowing cheeks.

With his head bowed on his breast, dragging his footsteps, Othomar returned to his room. He stayed there for hours, sitting silently, gloomily, in the same attitude; as usual, he did not appear at dinner and hardly ate what Andro brought him. Then he went to lie down on his couch, took up a book to read, but put it down again and raised himself up, as though with a sudden impulse:

"Why not now?" he thought. "Why keep on postponing it?..."

Night fell, but the upper corridors of the palace were not yet lighted; dragging his fatigue through this dusky shadow, Othomar went to the emperor's anterooms. The chamberlain announced him.

Oscar sat at his writing-table, pen in hand.

"Am I disturbing you, papa? Or can I speak to you?"

"No, you're not disturbing me.... Have you been to see mamma?"

"Yes, this afternoon; she was pretty well, but Berengar's temperature was higher."

The emperor glanced up at him:

"Worse than this morning?"

"I don't know: he was rather feverish."

The emperor rose:

"Do you want to talk to me?"

"Yes, papa."

"Wait a moment, then. I've not been to Berengar yet to-day."

He went out, leaving the door ajar.

Othomar remained alone. He sat down. He looked round the great work-room, which he knew so well from their morning consultations with the chancellor. Lately, however, he had not attended these. He thought over what he should say; meanwhile his eyes wandered around; they fell upon the great mirror with its gilt arabesques; something seemed strange to him. Then he rose and walked up to the glass:

"I was under the impression there was a flaw near the top of it," he thought. "I can't well be mistaken. Has it been renewed?"

He was still standing by the looking-glass, when Oscar returned:

"Berengar is not at all well; the fever is increasing," he said; and the tone of his voice hesitated. "Mamma is with him...."

Absorbed as he was in his own meditations, it did not strike Othomar that the little prince must have become worse for the empress, who was herself ill, to go to him.

"And about what did you want to speak to me?" asked the emperor, as the prince remained silent.

"About Berengar, papa."

"About Berengar?"

"About Berengar and myself. I have been contrasting myself with him, papa. We are brothers, we are both your sons. Which of us, do you think, takes most after you ... and ... our ancestors?"

"What are you driving at, Othomar?"

"At what is right, papa: right and just. Nature is sometimes unjust and blind; she ought to have let Berengar be born first and me next ... or even left me out altogether."

"Once more, what are you driving at, Othomar?"

"Can't you see, papa? I will tell you. Is Berengar not more of a monarch than I am? Is that not why he's your favourite? And ought I to deprive him of his natural rights for the sake of my traditional rights? I want to abdicate in his favour, papa. I want to abdicate everything, all my rights."

"The boy's mad," muttered Oscar.

"All my rights," repeated Othomar, dreamily, as though he foresaw the future: his little brother crowned.

"Othomar, are you raving?" asked the emperor.

"Papa, I am not raving. What I am now telling you I have thought over for days, perhaps weeks; I don't know: time passes so quickly.... What I am telling you I have discussed with mamma: it made her cry, but she did not oppose me. She looks at it as I do.... And what I tell you holds good; I have made up my mind and nothing can make me change it.... I am fond of Berengar; I am glad to give up everything to him; and I shall pray that he may become happy through my gift. I am convinced--and so are you--that Berengar will make a better emperor than I. What talent do I possess for ruling?..."

He shrugged his shoulders in helplessness, with a nervous shudder that jolted them:

"None," he answered himself. "I have no talent, I can do nothing. I do not know how to decide--as now--nor how to act; I shall always be a dreamer. Why then should I be emperor and he nothing more than the commander-in-chief of my army or my fleet? Surely that can't be right; that can't have been what nature intended.... Papa, I give it him, my birthright, and I ... I shall know how to live, if I must...."

The emperor had listened to him with his elbows on the table and his hands under his chin and now sat staring at him with his small, pinched eyes:

"Do you mean all this?" he asked.

"Yes, papa."

"You're not delirious?"

"No, papa, I'm not delirious."

"Then you're mad."

The emperor rose:

"Then you're mad, I tell you. Othomar, realize that you're mad and return to your senses; don't become quite insane."

"Why do you call me insane, papa? _Can't_ you agree with me that Berengar would be better than I?"

His father's cruel glances stabbed Othomar through and through:

"No, you're not insane in that; you're right there...."

"And why, then, am I insane because I wish, for that reason, to abdicate in his favour?"

"Because it's impossible, Othomar."

"What law prevents me?"

"My will, Othomar."

The prince drew himself up proudly:

"Your will?" he cried. "Your will? You acknowledge that I am nothing of a prince except by birth? You acknowledge that Berengar does possess your capacity for ruling and you will not, you _will_ not have me abdicate? And you think that I shall fall in with that will?..."

He uttered a hoarse laugh:

"No, papa, I shall pay no heed to that will. You can carry through your will in everything, but not in this. Though you called out your whole army, you could not prevail against me here. There is a limit to the power of human will, papa, and nothing, nothing, nothing can prevent me from considering myself unfit to reign and from _refusing_ to wear a crown!"

The emperor seized Othomar's wrists; his hot breath hissed in Othomar's face:

"You damned cub!" he snarled between his large, white teeth. "You wretched nincompoop! You're right: there's nothing of the emperor in you; there never will be. If I didn't know better, I'd say you were the son of a footman. You're right, you're incompetent. You're nothing: our crown doesn't fit you. And yet, though I had to lock you up in a prison, so that no one might hear of your baseness, you shall _not_ abdicate your rights. My will extends farther than you can see. Do you hear? You shan't do it, you shan't resign, though from this moment onwards I have to hide you, as a disgrace, from the world. Your slack brain can't understand that, can it? You can't understand that I'm fonder of Berengar than of a poltroon like you and that nevertheless I won't have him as my successor in your stead? Then I shall have to tell you. I won't have it, so as not to let the world see the degeneration of our race. I will not have the world know how pitiably we have deteriorated in you; and I would rather ... I would rather murder you than allow you to abdicate!"

Fiercely Oscar took the prince by his shoulders, pushed him backwards on a couch, on which Othomar sank in a huddled attitude, while his father continued to hold him like a prey in the grip of his strong hands:

"But I tell you," continued the emperor, "I tell you, you are _not_ the son of a footman, you are my son; and I shall not murder you, because I am your father. I will only say this to you, Othomar: you might have spared me this. I believe you have a high opinion of your own delicacy of feeling, but you have not the very least feeling. You do not even feel that you have been contemplating a villainy, the villainy of a proletarian, a slave, a pariah, a wretch. You have not felt even for an instant the pain you would cause me by such an infamy. You saw that I was fonder of your brother; you thought that I should approve of your cowardly proposal. Not for a moment did the thought occur to you that, with that cowardice of yours, you would give _me_ the greatest pain that I could ever experience!..."

Othomar, utterly crushed, had fallen back upon the couch. He was no longer able to distinguish what was just and what was true; he no longer knew himself at that minute; his father's words lashed his soul like whips. And he felt no strength within him to resist them: the insulting reproaches kept him down, as though he had been thrashed. Infamy and disgrace, insanity and degeneration: he collapsed beneath them; he gulped down the mud of them, till he felt like suffocating. And that he did not suffocate and continued to breathe, continued to live, that the light was bright around him, that things remained unchanged, that the outside world knew nothing: all this was despair to him. For a moment he thought of his mother. But he wished for darkness, for death, to hide himself, himself and his shame, his degeneration, the leprosy of his pariah-temperament.... It flashed through him in the second after that last lash of reproach, flashed across his despondent soul. He knew that Oscar always kept a loaded revolver in an open pigeon-hole of his writing-table. His brain grew tense in the effort of thinking how to reach it. He rose, approached the pigeon-hole; suddenly he sprang towards it, stretched out his hand and seized the pistol....

Did Oscar believe that his son had been driven mad by his last words and now wanted his father's life? Did he perceive this ecstasy of suicide in his offspring, was his quivering brain penetrated by the horrible thought that self-destruction would be the pariah's last refuge? Be this as it might, he rushed at Othomar. But the prince lightly leapt out of his reach, pointed the revolver, with wild eyes, with distorted features, in senseless despair, upon himself, upon his own forehead, on which the veins swelled blue....

"Othomar!" roared the emperor.

At this moment hurried footsteps were heard outside, confused words sounded in the anteroom and the Marquis of Xardi, the emperor's aide-de-camp, alarmed and flurried, threw the door wide open....

"Sir!" he exclaimed. "The empress asks if your majesty will come to Prince Berengar this instant...."

The shot had gone off, into the wall. Blood dripped from Othomar's ear. The emperor had caught hold of the crown-prince and torn the revolver, still loaded in five chambers, from him; a second shot went off in that brief moment of struggle, into the ceiling, Othomar remained standing vacantly.

"Marquis!" the emperor hissed out at Xardi. "I don't know what you think, but I tell you this: you've seen nothing, you think nothing. What happened here before you came in ... did not happen."

He pointed his finger, threateningly at Xardi:

"Should you ever forget, marquis, that it did not happen, then I shall forget who you are, though your pedigree dates back farther than ours!"

Xardi stood deathly pale before his emperor:

"My God, sir!..."

"What do you mean by entering your sovereign's room in this unmannerly fashion? Even the Duke of Xara has himself announced, marquis!"

"Sir...."

"What? Speak up!..."

"Her majesty...."

"Well, her majesty?"

"Prince Berengar ... the fever has increased ... he is delirious, sir, and the doctors ..."

The emperor turned pale:

"Is he dead?" he asked, fiercely. "Tell me at once."

"Not dead, sir, but...."

"But what?"

"But the doctors ... have no hope...."

With an oath of anguish the emperor pushed the aide aside and darted out of the room.

The prince remained standing. Life returned to him: a reality full of anguish, born of nightmare. His eyes swam with tears:

"Xardi," he implored, "Xardi ... your house has always been loyal to our house; swear to me that you will be silent."

The marquis looked at the crown-prince in consternation:

"Highness...."

"Swear to me, Xardi."

"I swear to you, highness," said the aide, subdued; and he stretched out his fingers to the crucifix hanging on the wall.

Othomar pressed his hand:

"Did Prince Berengar...." He could scarcely speak. "Did Prince Berengar become so ill suddenly?..."

"The fever is increasing every moment, highness, and he is delirious...."

"I will go to him," said Othomar.

He wiped the blood from his ear with his handkerchief and held the cambric, which was at once soaked through, against it.

In the last anteroom he passed the chamberlain and looked at him askance.

Xardi stopped for a moment:

"The Duke of Xara has hurt himself slightly," he said. "He was examining the emperor's revolver when I went in and he started: two shots went off."

"I heard them," whispered the chamberlain, pale as death.

"There might have been an accident...."

They were silent for a moment; their glances were full of understanding; a shudder crept down their backs. The chill night seemed to be descending over the palace as with clouds of evil omen.

"And ... the little prince?..." asked the chamberlain, shivering.

Xardi shrugged his shoulders; his eyes grew moist, through innate, immemorial love for his sovereigns:

"Dying," he answered, faintly.

6

The crown-prince passed through the anteroom: one of the doctors stood dipping poultices into a basin of ice; a valet was bringing in a pail of fresh ice. The door of the bedroom was open and Othomar remained standing at the door. The little prince lay on his camp-bed, talking in a low, sing-song tone; the empress, pale, suffering, bearing up in spite of everything, sat beside him with Princess Thera.

The emperor exchanged brief words with the two other doctors, whose features were overcast with a stark hopelessness; a mordant anguish distorted Oscar's face, which became furrowed with deep wrinkles:

"My God, he doesn't know me, he doesn't know me!" Othomar heard the emperor complain.

"Nor me," murmured the empress.

"What can it be? What, what, what can it be?" sang the little prince; and his usually shrill little voice sounded soft as a bird's melody: it was as though he were playing by himself. "I'm to have a present from my brother, from my brother, something nice!" he sang on.

The empress could distinguish his words, but she did not understand; and when he went on to sing the name of the crown-prince, with his title:

"Othomar, O Othomar of Xara, of Xara!..." she turned to the door and gently implored:

"Othomar, he's calling your name; come, perhaps he will know you!"

Othomar approached; he went past the emperor and knelt down by the bed; a smile lit up Berengar's little face.

"He is becoming calmer," said the kind doctor, whose tears were running down his cheeks, to Oscar. "Does your majesty see? The prince recognizes his highness the duke...."

A note of gladness sounded in his voice.

But a violent jealousy distorted the emperor's features:

"No, no," he said.

"Certainly, sir, only look," the doctor insisted, his hope reviving.

"O Othomar, O Othomar of Xara!" sang the little prince: he had recognized his brother, but did not see him in the flesh, saw him only in his waking dream, through the mist of his fever.

"What do you bring me that's nice? Smaller than a horse, but heavier? Heavier? Oh, how heavy it is, how heavy, heavy, heavy!..."

His little voice came as though with an effort, as though he were lifting something; his convulsive, small, broad hands made a gesture of laborious lifting.

"Berengar," said the crown-prince; and his voice broke, his heart sank within him....

"Othomar," replied the child.

A cry of anguish escaped the emperor.

"Yes, you're always so good to me," continued the little prince in his sing-song. "You always give me such nice things. You know, those lovely guns on my last birthday? And that pistol? But mamma's afraid of that!... Are you dying, Othomar? Look, there's blood on your ear.... But when people bleed they die! Are you dying, Othomar? Look, blood on your coat...."

The empress remained sitting straight upright; she glared from Berengar at the bleeding wound of her eldest son....

"Blood, blood, blood!" sang Berengar. "Othomar is dying! Yes, he always gives me so many nice things, does Othomar. I have so many already, many more than all the other children of Liparia put together! And what am I to have now?... Still more?... That nice thing: what is it? I can feel it: it's so heavy; but I can't see it...."

The doctor had come from the anteroom and approached with the poultices.

"I can't see it!... I can't see it!..." the boy sang out, painfully and faintly.

When the doctor applied the poultices, Berengar struggled, began to cry, as though a great sorrow was springing up in his little heart:

"I can't see it!" he sobbed. "I shall never see it!..."

A violent paroxysm succeeded the sobbing: he struck out wildly with his arms, pulled off the poultices, threw the ice off his head, stood up mad-eyed in his bed, flung away the sheets.... Othomar rose, the empress also. The emperor sat in a chair, his face covered with his hands, and sobbed by Princess Thera's side. The doctors approached the bed, endeavoured to calm Berengar, but he struck them: the fever mounted into his little brain in madness.

At this moment Professor Barzia entered: he was not staying in the palace; he had been sent for at his hotel.

"What is your highness doing here?" he said, point-blank, to Othomar.

The crown-prince made no reply.

"Your highness will retire to your own rooms at once," the professor commanded.

"Save my boy!" exclaimed the emperor, broken, sobbing.

"I am saving the crown-prince first, sir: he is killing himself here!"

"Very well, but next save _him!_" shouted Oscar, fiercely.

The other doctors had given orders: a tub was brought in, filled with lukewarm water, regulated by a thermometer.... But Othomar saw no more: he rushed away, driven out by Barzia's stern glances. He rushed along the corridors, through a group of officers and chamberlains, who stood anxiously whispering and made way for him. He plunged into his own room, which was not lighted. In the dark, he thought he was flinging himself upon a couch, but bumped upon the ground. There he remained lying. Then, as though crushed by the darkness, he began to croon, to moan, to sob aloud, with sharp, hysterical cries.

Andro entered; his foot struck against the prince. He lit the gas, tried to lift his master. But Othomar lay heavy as lead; fierce and prolonged, his nervous cries came jolting from his throat. Andro rang, once, twice, three times; he went on ringing for a long time; at last a footman and a chamberlain appeared together, at different doors.

"Call Professor Barzia!" cried Andro to the footman. "Excellency, will you help me lift his highness?" he begged the chamberlain.

But, when the footman turned round, he ran against the professor, who could do nothing for the little prince and had followed the crown-prince. He saw Othomar lying on the floor, moaning, screaming....

"Leave me alone with his highness," he ordered, with a glance around him.

The chamberlain, Andro, the footman obeyed his order.

The professor was a tall old man, heavily-built and strong; he approached the prince and lifted him in his arms, notwithstanding the leaden heaviness of hysteria. Thus he held him, merely with his arms around him, upon the couch and looked deep into his eyes, with hypnotic glances. Suddenly Othomar ceased his cries; his voice was hushed. His head fell feebly upon Barzia's shoulder. The professor continued to hold him in his arms. The prince became calm, like a quieted child, without Barzia's having uttered a word.

"May I request your highness to go to bed?" said the professor, with a gentle voice of command.

He assisted Othomar to get up and himself lit the light in the bedroom and helped the prince off with his coat.

"What has made your highness' ear bleed?" asked Barzia, whose fingers were soiled with clotted blood.

"A revolver-shot," Othomar began, faintly; his closed and averted eyes told the rest.

The professor said nothing more. As though Othomar were a child, he went on helping him, washed his ear, his neck, his hands, with a mother's gentleness. Then he made him lie down in bed, covered him over, tidying the room like a servant. Then he went and sat by the bed, where Othomar lay staring with strange, wide-open eyes: he took the prince's hand and sat thus for a long time, looking softly down upon him. The light behind, turned down low, threw Barzia's large head into the shadow and just glanced upon his bald cranium, from which a few grey locks hung down his neck. At last he said, gently:

"Your highness wishes to get well, do you not?"

"Yes," said Othomar, in spite of himself.

"How does your highness propose to do so?" asked the professor.

The prince did not answer.

"Doesn't your highness know? Then you must think it over. But you must keep very calm, will you not, very calm...."

And he stroked Othomar's hand with a gentle, regular motion, as though anointing it with balsam.

"For your highness must never again give way to nervous attacks. Your highness must study how to prevent them. I am giving your highness much to think about," continued Barzia, with a smile. "I am doing this because I want to let your highness think of other things than of what you are thinking. I want to clear your brain for you. Are you tired and do you want to go to sleep, or shall I go on talking?"

"Yes, go on," whispered the prince.

"There are days of great grief in store for the Imperial," the doctor resumed, gently. "Your highness must think of those days without permitting yourself to be overcome by the grief of them.... The little prince will probably not recover, highness. Will you think of that ... and think of your parents, their poor majesties? There are days like these for a nation, or for a single family, in which grief seems to pile itself up. For does not this day, this night seem to mark the end of your race, my prince?... Lie still, lie still, don't move: let me talk on, like a garrulous old man.... Does your highness know that the emperor to-day, for the first time in his whole life, cried, sobbed? His younger son is dying. Between this boy and the father is a first-born son, who is very, very ill.... Is not all this the end?"

"Yet, if God wills it so," whispered Othomar.

"It is our duty to be resigned," said Barzia. "But does God will it so?"

"Who can tell?..."

"Ask yourself, but not now, highness: to-morrow, to-morrow.... After the saddest nights ... the mornings come again...."

The professor rose and mixed a powder in a glass of water:

"Drink this, highness...."

Othomar drank.

"And now lie quiet and close those wide eyes."

"I shall not be able to sleep though...."

"That is not necessary, only close those eyes...."

Barzia stroked them with his hand; the prince kept them closed. His hand again lay in the hand of the professor.

A hush descended upon the room. Outside, in the corridors and galleries, perplexed steps approached at times, from the distance, in futile haste; then they sounded away, far away, in despair. A world of sorrow seemed to fill the palace, there, outside that room, until it held every hall of it with its dark, tenebrous woe. But in this one room nothing stirred. The professor sat still and stared before him, absorbed in thought; the crown-prince had fallen asleep like a child.

7

Next morning the day rose upon an empire in mourning. Prince Berengar had passed away in the night.

Othomar had slept long and woke late, as in a strange calm. When Professor Barzia told him of the young prince's end--the apathy of the last moments, after a raging fever--it seemed to him as if he already knew it. The great sorrow which he felt was singularly peaceful, without rebellion in his heart, and surprised himself. He remained lying calmly when the professor forbade him to get up. He pictured to himself without emotion the little prince, motionless, with his eyes closed, on his camp-bed. Mechanically he folded his hands and prayed for his brother's little soul.

He was not allowed to leave his room that day and saw only the empress, who came to him for an instant. He was not at all surprised that she too was calm, dry-eyed: she had not yet shed tears. Even when he raised himself from his pillows and embraced her, she did not cry. Nor did he cry, but only his own calmness astonished him: not hers. She stayed for but a moment; then she went away, as though with mechanical steps, and he was left alone. He saw nobody else that day except Barzia: not even Andro entered his room.

Outside the chamber, the prince, judging from certain steps in the corridors, certain sounds of voices--the little that penetrated to him--could divine the sorrow of the palace; he pictured sad tidings spreading through the land, through Europe and causing people to stand in consternation in the presence of death, which had taken them by surprise. Life was not secure: who could tell that he would be alive to-morrow! Vain were the plans of men: who could tell what the hour would bring forth! And he lay thinking of this calmly, in the singular peacefulness of his soul, in which he saw the futility of struggling against life or against death.

Not till next day did Barzia give him leave to get up, late in the afternoon. After his shower-bath, he dressed calmly, in his lancer's uniform, with crape round the sleeve. When he saw himself in the glass, he was surprised at his resemblance to his mother, at seeing how he now walked with the same mechanical step. Barzia allowed him to go to the empress' sitting-room. He there found her, the emperor, Thera and the Archduke and Archduchess of Carinthia, who had arrived at Lipara the evening before. They sat close together, now and then softly exchanging a word.

Othomar went up to the emperor and would have embraced him; Oscar, however, only pressed his hand. After that Othomar embraced his sisters and his brother-in-law. Then he sank down by the empress, took her hand in his and sat still. She looked attenuated and white as chalk in her black gown. She did not weep: only the two princesses sobbed, persistently, again and again.

The family dined alone in the small dining-room, unattended by any of the suite. A depression had descended upon the palace, which seemed wholly silent at this hour, with but now and then the soft footsteps through the galleries of an aide-de-camp carrying a funeral-wreath, or a flunkey bringing a tray full of telegrams. After the short dinner, the family retired once more to the empress' drawing-room. The hours dragged on. Night had fallen. Then the Archbishop of Lipara was announced.

The imperial family rose; they went through the galleries, unattended, to the great knights' hall. Halberdiers stood at the door, in mourning. They entered. The emperor gave his hand to the empress and led her to the throne, whose crown and draperies were covered with crape. On either side were seats for Othomar, the princesses, the archduke.

In the middle of the hall, in front of the throne, rose the catafalque, under a canopy of black and ermine. On it lay the little prince in uniform. Over his feet hung a small blue knight's mantle with a great white cross; a boy's sword lay on his breast; and his little hands were folded over the jewelled hilt. By his little head, somewhat higher up, shone, on a cushion, a small marquis' coronet. Six gilt candelabra with many tall candles shone peacefully down upon the lad's corpse and left the great hall still deeper in shadow: only, outside, the moon rose in the distant blue, nocturnal sky; here and there it tinged with a white glamour the trophies and suits of armour that hung or stood like iron spectres in niches and against the walls. At the foot of the catafalque, on a table like an altar, with a white velvet cloth, a great gilt crucifix spread out its two arms, between two candelabra, in commiseration.

With drawn swords, motionless as the armour on the walls, stood four blue-mantled knights of St. Ladislas, two at either side of the catafalque.

A soft scent of flowers was wafted through the hall. All round the catafalque wreaths of every kind of white blossom were stacked in great heaps; the fragrance of violets outscented all the others.

They sat down: the emperor, the empress and their four children. Slowly the archbishop entered with his priests and choir-boys. Then the imperial party knelt on cushions placed before their seats. The prelate read the prayers for the dead; and the chanted _Kyrie Eleison_ and _Agnus Dei_ besought mercy for Berengar's little soul amongst the souls in purgatory, quivered softly through the vast hall, were wafted with the scent of the flowers over the motionless, sleeping face of the imperial child....

The rite came to an end; the prelate sprinkled the holy water, went sprinkling around the catafalque. The princes left the hall, but Othomar stayed on:

"I want to lay my wreath," he whispered to the empress.

The priests also departed, slowly; the crown-prince expressed to the four knights, who were waiting to be relieved by others, his wish to be left alone for a moment. They too withdrew. Then he saw Thesbia appear at the door, with a large white wreath in his hand. He went to the aide-de-camp and took the wreath from him.

Othomar remained alone. The hall stretched long and broad, with darkness at either end. The moon had risen higher, seemed whiter, cast a ghostly glamour over the suits of armour. In the centre, as though in sanctity, between the pious light of the tall candles, rose the catafalque, lay the prince.

The crown-prince mounted two steps of the catafalque and placed his wreath. Then he looked at Berengar's face: no fever distorted it now; it lay peaceful-pale, as though sleeping. All sounds had died away in the hall; a deadly silence reigned. Here the world of sorrow which had filled the palace and the country seemed to have become sanctified in an ecstasy of calm. And Othomar saw himself alone with his soul. The uncertainty of life, the vanity of human intentions were again revealed to him, but more clearly; they were no longer black mystery, they became harmony. It was as though he saw the whole harmony of the past: in all Liparia's historic past, in the whole past of the world there sounded not one false note. All sorrow was sacred and harmonious, tending more closely to the lofty end, which would be in its turn a beginning and never anything but harmony. Resignation descended upon his mood like a spirit of holiness; his strange calmness became resignation. It was as though his nerves were relaxed in one great assuagement.

And his resignation contained only the sadness that never again would he hear the high-pitched little commanding voice of the boy whom he had loved, that this little life had run its course, so soon and for ever. His resignation contained only the surprise that all this was ordered thus and not as he had imagined it. He himself would have to wear the crown which he had wished to relinquish to Berengar. And it now seemed to him as though he himself were receiving it back from the dead boy's hands. This no doubt was why he felt no touch of rebellion in his soul, why he felt this peace, this sense of harmony. His gift was returning to him as a legacy.

Long he stood thus, thinking, staring at his motionless little brother; and his thoughts became simplified within him: he saw lying straight before him the road which he should follow....

Then he heard his name:

"Othomar..."

He looked up and saw the empress at the door. She approached:

"Barzia was asking where you were," she whispered. "He was uneasy about you...."

He smiled to her and shook his head to say no, that he was calm.

She came close, climbed the steps of the catafalque and leant against his arm:

"How peaceful his little face is!" she murmured. "Oh, Othomar, I have not yet given him my last kiss! And to-morrow he will no longer belong to me: all those people will then be filing past."

"But now, mamma, he still belongs to us ... to you...."

"Othomar ..."

"Mamma ..."

"Shall I not have ... to lose you also?"

"No, mamma, not me.... I shall go on living ... for you...."

He embraced her; she looked up at him, surprised at his voice. Then she looked again at her dead child. She released herself from her son's arms, raised herself still higher, bent over the little white face and kissed the forehead. But, when the stony coldness of the dead flesh met her lips, she drew back and stared stupidly at the corpse, as though she understood for the first time. Her arms grew stiff with cramp; she wrung her fingers; she fell straight back upon Othomar.

And her eyes became moist with the first tears that she had shed for Berengar's death and she hid her head in Othomar's arms and sobbed and sobbed....

Then he led her carefully, slowly, down the steps of the catafalque, led her out of the hall. In the corridor they came across Barzia; the prince's calm and quiet face, as he supported his mother, eased the professor's mind....

So soon as the empress and crown-prince had left the knights' hall, four knights of St. Ladislas entered in their blue robes. They took up their positions on either side of the catafalque and stood motionless in the candle-light, staring before them, watching in the night of mourning over the little imperial corpse, on which the blue light of the moon now descended.... The priests too entered and prayed....

The palace was silent. When Othomar had consigned his mother, at the door of her apartments, to the care of Hélène of Thesbia, he went through the galleries to his own rooms. But, on turning a corridor, he started. The great state-staircase yawned, faintly lighted, at his feet, with beneath it the hollow space of the colossal entrance-hall. Upholsterers were occupied in draping the banisters of the staircase with crape gauze, for the time when the coffin should be carried downstairs. With wide arms they measured out the mists of black, threw black cloud upon cloud; the clouds of crape heaped themselves up with a dreary flimsiness, up and up and up, seeming to fill the whole staircase and to rise stair upon stair as though about to conquer the whole palace with their gloom....

The upholsterers did not see the crown-prince and worked on, silently, in the faint light. But a cold thrill passed through Othomar. In deathly pallor he stared at the men there, at his feet, measuring out the crape and sending clouds of it up to him. He recalled his dream: the streets of Lipara overflowing with crape till the very sun reeled.... His blood seemed to freeze in his veins....

Then he made the sign of the Cross:

"O God, give me strength!" he prayed in consternation....

8

Next day, through the guard of honour of the grenadiers, the people filed past the little prince's body. The following morning, it was removed to Altara and interred in the imperial vault in St. Ladislas' Cathedral. Princes Gunther and Herman of Gothland had come over for the ceremony, but the Duke of Xara was forbidden by Professor Barzia to take part in it: he remained at Lipara.

The Gothlandic princes and their suite returned with the Emperor Oscar to the capital, where, at her sister's pressing request, Queen Olga had also come, with Princess Wanda. And, in the mourning stillness of the Imperial, the family drew together in a narrow circle of intimacy. After her first tears, the Empress Elizabeth had lost her unnatural calm and constantly gave way to violent fits of sorrow, which Queen Olga or Othomar had difficulty in allaying. The emperor was inconsolable, indulging his grief with childish vehemence. Nobody had ever seen him like that before, nobody recognized him. The fact that he had lost his favourite child aroused his soul to rebellion against God. In addition to this, he had very much taken to heart his last conversation with Othomar, in which the prince had spoken to him of abdicating. The emperor had not returned to the subject, but it was never out of his thoughts. He feared that he would have to discuss it with Othomar again. He was furious when he felt how powerless he was to prevent the crown-prince from taking this desperate resolution. And he pictured the legal results if the prince maintained his purpose: the Archduchess of Carinthia empress, the archduke prince-consort and the house of Czyrkiski no longer reigning in the male line on the throne of Liparia. The possibility of this contingency, taken in conjunction with his sorrow at Berengar's death, made the Emperor Oscar suffer with that very special suffering of a monarch in whose veins still flows all the hereditary attachment to the greatness of his ancestors and who hopes to see this endure for all time. And he was also inconsolable for the loss of the child whom he loved best, more profoundly but also more silently, in greater secrecy, since he did not speak of it; and this probably made him feel more bitterly the thought of the future which he saw imaged before him. He had not even mentioned it to the empress, because of a certain superstitious dread.

And with this mental sorrow--that his robust soul, which had always retained a touch of childishness, was allowing itself to feel weak, as though it were the soul of any other mortal instead of his, a monarch's--there was mingled his substantial annoyance about the army bill. There would be three hundred millions needed: one hundred millions had already been voted for the increase of the infantry; the other two hundred, for the artillery, Count Marcella, the minister for war, had not yet succeeded in obtaining. The majority of the army committee was against this colossal arming of the frontier-forts; the minister already expected a violent opposition in the house of deputies and was fully prepared for his fall. None of the three--Oscar, Myxila or Marcella--was willing to make the least compromise. And Oscar moreover was prepared to support his minister to the point of impossibility.