Chapter IX: Part 9

Stephania's eyes cowered beneath Otto's gaze. Rising abruptly she averted her head, but every trace of colour had left her face as she raised the veil. Then she turned slowly and extended her hand. Otto grasped it, pressing it to his lips in an ecstasy of joy, then he drew her down to the seat she had abandoned, kneeling by her side.

For a moment she gazed at him thoughtfully.

"What do you want of me?" she then asked abruptly.

"I would have you be my friend," he stammered, idol-worship in his eyes.

"Is a woman's friendship so rare a commodity, that you come to me?" she replied, drawing her hand from him.

"I have never known woman's love nor friendship,--and it is yours I want."

Stephania drew a long breath. Truly,--it required no effort on her part to lead him on. He made her task an easy one. Yet there rose in her heart a spark of pity. The complete trust of this boy-king was to the wife of Crescentius a novel sensation in the atmosphere of doubt and suspicion in which she had grown up. It was almost a pity to shatter the temple in which he had placed her as goddess.

The mood held sway but a moment, then with a cry of delirious gayety, she wrote the word "Friendship" rapidly on the water.

"Look," she said, "scarcely a ripple remains! That is the end. Let us but add another word, 'Farewell'--and let the trace it shall leave tell when we shall meet again."

The words died on Otto's lips. He could not fathom the lightning change which had come over her. With mingled sadness and passion he gazed upon the lovely face, so pale and cold.

"Let us not part thus," he stammered.

Stephania had risen abruptly, shaking herself free of his kneeling form.

"What is it all to lead to?" she questioned.

Otto rose slowly to his feet. Reeling as if stunned by a blow, he staggered after her.

"Do not leave me thus," he begged with outstretched arms.

Stephania started away from him, as if in terror.

"Do not touch me,--as you are a man--"

Otto's hand went to his head. Was he waking? Was he dreaming? Was this the same woman who had but a moment ago--

He had not time to think out the thought.

He felt his neck encircled by an airy form and arms, and lips whose sweetness made his senses reel were breathlessly pressed upon his own.

But for an evanescent instant the sensation endured.

A voice whispered low: "Otto!"

When he tried to embrace the mocking phantom he grasped the empty air.

He rushed madly forward, but at this instant there arose a wild uproar and clamour around him. The silver moon on the fountain burst into a blaze of whirling light, which illumined the whole grotto. The shrill summons of a bell was to be heard as from the depths of the fountain, and suddenly the verdant precincts were crowded with a most extraordinary company, shouting, hooting, laughing, yelling, and waving torches. Satyrs, nymphs, fauns, and all varieties of sylvan deities poured out of every nook and cranny by which there was an entrance, all shrieking execration on the profaner of the sacred solitudes and brandishing sundry weapons appropriate to their qualities. The satyrs wielded their crooked staves, the fauns their stiff pine-wreaths, the nymphs their branches of oak, and a loud clamour arose. But by far the most formidable personages were a number of shepherds with huge boar-spears, who made their appearance on every side.

"Pan! Pan!" shouted a hundred voices. "Come and judge the mortal who has dared to profane thy solitudes. Echo--where is Pan?"

Distant and faint the cry came back:

"Pan! Where is Pan?"

For a moment Otto stood rooted to the spot, believing himself in all truth surrounded by the rural gods of antiquity. He stared at the scene before him as on some strange sorcery. But suddenly a suspicion rushed upon him that he was betrayed, either to be made the jest of a company of carnival's revellers, or, perhaps, the object of vengeance of the Senator of Rome.

Gazing round with a quick fear in his heart, at finding himself thus completely surrounded, and meditating whether to attempt a forcible escape, he was startled by the shrill shriek of sylvan pipes and attended by a riotous company of satyrs, Pan on his goat-legs hobbled into the grotto, the satyrs playing a wild march on their oaken reeds.

"Silence! Where is the guilty nymph who has lured the mortal hither?" shouted the sylvan god.

"Egeria! Egeria!" resounded numerous accusing voices.

"At thine old tricks again luring wisdom whither it should least come?" questioned Pan, severely. "Yes, hide thyself in thy blushing waves! But the mortal,--where is he?"

"Here! Here!" exclaimed the nymphs with one voice. "Had it been old Silenus or one of his satyrs,--we had not wondered."

"The King! the King!" resounded on all sides amidst a general outburst of laughter.

Otto became more and more convinced that the scene had been enacted to mock him, and though he did not understand the drift of their purpose, at which Stephania had doubtlessly connived, a cold hand seemed to clutch his heart.

"In very truth, you have the laughing side of the jest," he turned to the Sylvan god. "But if you will confront me with the nymph, I will prove that at least we ought to share in equal punishment," Otto concluded his defence, endeavouring to make the best of his dangerous position.

"This shall not be!" exclaimed a nymph near by. "Bring him along and our queen shall judge him."

Ere Otto could give vent to remonstrance, he found himself hemmed in by the shepherds with their spears. His doubts as to the ultimate purpose of the revellers seemed now to call for some imperative decision, but while he remembered the dismal legends of these haunts, his lips still tingled with the magic fire of Stephania's kiss and it seemed impossible to him that she could really mean to harm him. Still he had grave misgivings, when suddenly a mocking voice saluted him and into the cave strode Johannes Crescentius, Senator of Rome,--apparently from the valley without, a smiling look of welcome on his face.

"Fear nothing, King Otto," he said jovially. "Your sentence shall not be too severe. Your forfeit shall be light, if you will but discover and point out to us the nymph who usurped the part of Egeria, that we may further address ourselves to her for her reprehensible conduct."

The feelings with which Otto listened to this beguiling and perhaps perfidious statement may be imagined. But he replied with great presence of mind.

"It were a vain effort indeed to recognize one nymph from another in the gloom. Lead on then, since it is the Senator of Rome who guarantees my immunity from the fate of Orpheus."

Marching like a prisoner of war and surrounded by the shepherd spearmen, Otto affected to enter into the spirit of the jest and suffered himself quietly to be bound with chains of ivy which the least effort could snap asunder. The moment he stepped forth from the grotto his path was beset by a multitude of the most extraordinary phantoms. The surrounding woods teemed with the wildest excrescences of pagan worship; statues took life; every tree yielded its sleeping Dryad; strange melodies resounded in every direction; Nayades rose in the stream and laughingly showered their spray upon him. With a cheerful hunting blast Diana and her huntresses appeared on an overhanging rock and darted blunt arrows with gilded heads at him, until he arrived at an avenue of lofty elms, whose overarching branches, filigreed by the crimson after-glow of departing day, resembled the interior of a Gothic cathedral and formed a natural hall of audience fit for the rural divinities. Bosquets of orange trees, whose ivory tinted blossoms gleamed like huge pearls out of the dark green of the foliage, wafted an inexpressibly sweet perfume on the air.

The vista terminated in an open, semi-circular court, surrounded by terraces of richest emerald hue, in the midst of which rose an improvised throne. The rising moon shone upon it with a light, like that of a rayless sun, and Otto discovered that the terraces were thronged with a splendid court, assembled round a woman who occupied the throne.

As the prisoner approached, environed by his grotesque captors, laughter as inextinguishable as that which shook the ancient gods of Olympus on a similar occasion, resounded among the occupants of the terrace. Continuing his forced advance, Otto discovered with a strange beating of the heart in the splendidly attired queen, Stephania, the wife of Crescentius.

A bodice of silver-tissue confined her matchless form, which with every heave of her bosom threw iridescent gleams, and a diadem which shone as with stars, so bright were its jewels, flashed upon her brow.

She looked a queen indeed, and but for the ivory pallor of her face it would have been impossible to guess that she was in any way concerned with the object of the strange pageant, which now approached her throne.

The sphinx-like countenance of the Senator of Rome seemed to evince no very great enthusiasm in the frolic; the invited guests appeared not to know how to look, and took their cue from the Lord of Castel San Angelo.

When Otto was at last brought face to face with his fair judge, his own pallor equalled that of Stephania, and both resembled rather two marble statues than beings of flesh and blood. Stephania's lips were tightly compressed, and when Pan recited his accusation, complaining of an attempt to profane his solitudes and to misguide one of his chastest nymphs, so far from overwhelming the culprit with the laughing raillery of which she was mistress and an outburst of which all seemed to expect, Stephania was silent and kept her eyes fixed on the ground, as if she feared to raise them and to meet Otto's burning gaze.

"Answer, King of the Germans," urged Crescentius with a smile, "else you are lost!"

"The charges are too vague," Otto replied. "Let Pan, if he has any witness, of what has happened, allege particulars--and if he does--by his crooked staff, even my accusers shall acquit me without denial on my part."

General mutterings and suppressed laughter followed this singular defence, during which Stephania's countenance took all the pallid tints, which the return of his consciousness and dignity had chased from Otto's cheeks.

But she did not think it wise to prolong the scene.

"Since the august offender," she said hastily and without lifting her long silken lashes, "cannot discover among my retinue the nymph who enticed him into the grotto, I pronounce this sentence upon him: 'Let his ignorance be perpetual.'"

Then she invited him to a seat in the circle over which she presided and her graciousness obviously caused Otto's spirits to rise, for, starting up, as it were, into new existence at the word, he took his station in a manner which enabled him to see Stephania's face and her glorious eyes.

At the beck of her hand there now approached a band of musicians and the effect of their harmonies beneath the hushed and now star-resplendent skies was inexpressibly delicious. The dreams of Elysium seemed to be realized. These indeed seemed to be the happy fields, in the atmosphere of which the delighted spirit was consoled for every woe, and as Otto almost unwittingly gazed upon the woman before him, so passionately loved and to him lost for ever; as he marked the languor and melancholy which had stolen over her countenance, he could hardly restrain himself from throwing himself and all he called his, at her feet.

Emperor and king though he was,--the one jewel he craved lay beyond the confines of his dominion.

After the conclusion of the serenade, the nymphs of Stephania's retinue showered their flowers upon the sylvan gods, who eagerly scrambled over them, when Stephania started up, as from a dream.

"How is this?" she hurriedly exclaimed, "I still hold my flowers? And you are all matched by the chances of the fragrant blossoms? But King Otto is likewise without his due share, and so it would seem that fate would have him my companion at the collation awaiting us. Therefore, my lords and ladies, link hands as the flow'ry oracles direct. I shall follow last with my exalted guest."

Otto did not remark the quick glance which flashed between Crescentius and his wife. The ladies of Stephania's retinue immediately conformed to the expressed wish of the hostess by taking the arms of the cavaliers who had chanced upon their flowers.

A number of pages, beautiful as cupids, lighted the way with torches which flamed with a perfumed lustre, and the procession moved anew towards the grotto, where, during their absence, a repast had been spread. But the last couple had preceded them some twenty paces, ere Stephania, without raising her eyes, took Otto's motionless arm.

The memory of all that had passed, a natural feeling of embarrassment on both sides, prolonged the silence between them. Stephania doubtlessly fathomed his thoughts, for she smiled with a degree of timidity not unmingled with doubt, as she broke the silence.

The question, though softly spoken, came swift as a dart and equally unexpected.

"Have you ever loved, King Otto?"

Otto looked up with a start into her radiant face.

He had anticipated some veiled rebuke for his own strange conduct, anything,--not this.

He breathed hard, then he replied:

"Until I came to Rome, I never gazed on beauty that won from me more than the applause of the eye, which a statue or a painting, equally beautiful, might have claimed."

She nodded dreamily.

"I have heard it said that the blue-eyed, sunny-haired maidens of your native North make us Romans appear poor in your sight!"

"Not so! The red rose is not discarded for the white. The contrast only heightens the beauty."

"I have heard it said," Stephania continued, choosing a circuitous path instead of the direct one her guests had taken, "that you Teutons have ideals even, while you starve on bread and water. And I have been told that, were you permitted to choose for your life's companion the most beautiful woman on earth, you would hie yourselves into the gray ages of the world's dawn for the realization of your dreams. Has your ideal been realized, since you have established your residence in Rome, King Otto?"

There was a brief pause, then he replied, looking straight ahead:

"Love comes more stealthily than light, of which even the dark cypresses are enamoured in your Italian noondays."

"You evade my question."

"What would you have me say?"

She gave him a quick glance, which set his pulses to throbbing wildly and sent the hot blood seething through his veins.

"Is your heart free, King Otto?"

A drear sense of desolation and loneliness came over the youth.

"Free," he replied almost inaudibly.

She gave a little, nervous laugh.

"But how know you that, surrounded by such loveliness, as that which you have this very night witnessed in my circle, your hour may not strike at last?"

Otto raised his eyes to those of the woman by his side.

"Fair lady, beautiful as Love's oracle itself, my heart is in little danger even from your fairest satellites. But mistake not my meaning. I am not insusceptible to the fever of the Gods! Love I have sought under all forms and guises! And if I found it not, if I have listened to its richest eloquence as to some song in a foreign tongue, which my heart understood not,--it is not that I have lacked the soul for love. Love I found not, though phantoms I have eagerly chased in this troubled dream of life. What avails it, to contend with one's destiny? And this is mine!"

Stephania laughed.

"You speak like some hoary anchorite from the Thebaide. Truly, now I begin to understand, why your chroniclers call you the 'Wonder-child of the World.' Lover, idealist, and cynic in one!"

"Nay--you wrong me! Cynic I am not! My mother was a princess of Greece. The fairest woman my eyes ever gazed upon--save one! She died in her youth and beauty, following my father, the emperor, into his early grave. I was left alone in the world, alone with the monks, alone in the great gloom of our tall and spectral pines! The monks understood not my craving for the sun and the blue skies. The whiter snows of Thuringia chilled my heart and froze my soul! I longed for Rome--I craved for the South. My dead mother's blood flows in my veins. Hither I came, braving the avalanches and the fever and the wrath of the electors, I came, once more to challenge the phantoms of the past from their long forgotten tombs, to make Rome--what once she was--the capital of the earth. Rome's dream is Eternity!"

Stephania listened in silence and with downcast eyes.

Never had the ear of the beautiful Roman heard words like these. The illiteracy, vileness, and depravity of her own countrymen never perhaps presented itself to her in so glaring a contrast, as when thrown into comparison with the ideal son of the Empress Theophano and Otto II, of Saracenic renown. His words were like some strange music, which flatters the senses, that try in vain to retain their harmonies.

There was a pause during which neither spoke.

Otto thought he felt the soft pressure of Stephania's arm against his own.

"You spoke of one who alone might challenge the dead empress in point of fairness," the woman spoke at last and her voice betrayed an emotion which she vainly strove to conceal. "Who is that one?"

"Why do you ask?"

"Theophano's beauty was renowned. Even our poets sing of her."

"I will tell you at some other time."

"Tell me now!"

"We are approaching the grotto. Your guests are waiting."

"Tell me now!"

"Crescentius is expecting us. He will be wondering at our tardiness."

"Tell me now!"

Otto breathed hard.

"Oh, why do you ask, Stephania, why do you ask?"

"Who is the woman?"

The question fell huskily from her lips.

The answer came, soft as a zephyr that dies as it passes:

"Stephania!"

Quickening their steps they reached the grotto, without daring to face each other. The woman's heart throbbed as impetuously as that of the youth, as they found themselves at the entrance of the Grotto of Egeria in a blaze of light, emanating from innumerable torches artfully arranged among the stalactites, which diffused brilliant irradiations. The sumptuous dresses of the nobles and barons blazed into view; the spray from the fountain leaped up to a great height and descended in showers of liquid jewels of iridescent hues.

A collation of fruits and wines wooed the appetite of the guests on every hand. Sweet harmonies floated from the adjoining groves, and, amidst a general buzz of delight and admiration, Stephania took her seat at the festal board between the Senator of Rome and the German king.

The flower of beauty, wit and magnificence of the Senator's Roman court had been culled to grace this festival, for there was no one present, who was not remarked for at least one of these attributes, some even by the union of all. The most beautiful women of Rome surrounded the consort of the Senator, who outshone them all. Even envy could not deny her the crown.

Nevertheless, and for the first time, perhaps, Stephania seemed to misdoubt the supremacy and power of her great beauty, and while she affected being absorbed in other matters, her eye watched with devouring anxiety every glance of her exalted guest, whose feverish vivaciousness betrayed to her his inmost thoughts.

The Senator's countenance was that of the Sphinx of the desert. He appeared neither to see nor to hear.

Otto meanwhile, in order to remove from his path the terrible temptation which he felt growing with every instant, in order to divert Eckhardt's attention, who he instinctively felt was watching his every gesture, and to stifle any possible suspicions, which Crescentius might entertain, affected to be struck with the appearance of one of Stephania's ladies, who resembled her in stature and in the colour of her hair. He intentionally mistook her for the fairy in the grotto, laughingly challenging her acquaintance, which she as merrily denied, declaring herself to be the wife of one of the barons present. But Otto would not be convinced and attached himself to her with a zeal, which brought on both many pointed jests on the part of the assembled revellers.

Stephania immediately observed the ruse, but as her eye met that of the Senator, an unaccountable terror seized her. She turned away and pretended to join her guests in their merriment. Among those present were some of the most imaginative and prolific minds of an age, otherwise dark and illiterate, yet the brilliant play and coruscations of Stephania's wit, the depth of some of the glittering remarks which fell from her lips, were not surpassed by any. At times she exhibited a tone of recklessness almost bordering on defiance and mockery, the lightning's power to scorch as well as to illumine, but when relapsing into what appeared her more natural mood, it was scarcely possible to resist the grace and seductiveness of her manner. Even the doctrines, which half in gayety, half in haughty acceptance of the character assigned to her on this evening, she promulgated, full of poetical epicureanism, fell with so sweet a harmony from her lips, that saints could not have wished them mended.

Otto, meanwhile, continued to play his serf-assigned part, but he lost not a single word or gesture of Stephania and his fervour towards his chosen partner rose in proportion with Stephania's gayety. But he did not fail to observe that her siren-smile was directed towards himself and his soul drank in the beams of her beauty, as the palm-tree absorbs the fervid suns of Africa, motionless with delight.

While gayety and convivial enjoyment seemed at their height, Eckhardt strode from the grotto, unobserved by the revellers and entered a secluded path leading into the remoter regions of the park. Otto's predilection for the wife of the Senator of Rome had escaped him as little as had her own seeming coquetry, and he had looked on in silence, until, seized with profound disgust, he could bear it no longer.

What he had always feared was coming to pass.

When the Romans could no longer vanquish their foes on the field of battle, they destroyed them with their women.

The gardens which Eckhardt traversed resembled the fabled treasure-house of Aladdin. Every tree glistened with sparkling clusters of red, blue and green lights, every flowerbed was bordered with lines and circles of iridescent globes, and the fountains tossed up spiral columns of amber, rose and amethyst spray against the transparent azure of the summer skies, in which a lustrous golden moon shone full.

But a madness seemed suddenly to have seized the revellers.

No one knew whither Crescentius had gone.

No one knew who was a dancer, a flute-player, a noble.

Satyrs and fauns fell to chasing nymphs with shouting. Everywhere laughter and shouts were heard, whispers and panting breaths. Darkness covered certain parts of the groves. Truly it was a long time, since anything similar had been seen in Rome.

Roused and intoxicated by the contamination, the fever had at last seized Otto. Rushing into the forest, he ran with the others. New flocks of nymphs swarmed round him every moment. Seeing at last a band of maidens led by one arrayed as Diana, he sprang to it, intending to scrutinize the goddess more closely. They encircled him in a mad whirl, and, evidently bent upon making him follow, rushed away the next moment like a herd of deer. But he stood rooted to the spot with wildly beating heart.

A great yearning, such as he had never felt before, seized him at that moment and the love for Stephania rushed to his heart as a tremendous tidal wave. Never had she seemed to him so pure, so dear, so beloved, as in that forest of frenzied madness. A moment before he had himself wished to drink of that cup, which drowned past and present; now he was seized with repugnance and remorse. He felt stifled in this unholy air; his eyes sought the stars, glimmering through the interstices of the interwoven branches.

A shadow fell across his path.

He turned. Before him stood Eckhardt, the Margrave.

"I have seen and heard," he spoke in response to Otto's questioning gaze. "King of the Germans, I have enough of Rome, enough of feasts, enough of conquests. I am stifling. I cannot breathe in this accursed air. Command the return beyond the Alps. On these siren rocks your ship will founder! Rome is no place for you!"

Otto stared at the man as if he feared he had lost his senses.

"King of the Germans," Eckhardt continued, "on my knees I entreat you--at the risk of your displeasure,--return beyond the Alps! See what has become of you! See what a woman has made of you, you, the son of the vanquisher of the Saracens!"

He stretched out his arms entreatingly, as if to lead him away.

Otto covered his face with both hands.

"And I love only her in the wide, wide world," he muttered.

At this juncture a light, elastic step resounded on the gravel path.

Benilo stepped into the clearing.

"Stephania awaits the king in the pavillion."

Eckhardt laid his hands on Otto's shoulders, straining his eyes in silent entreaty into those of the King.

"Do not go!" he begged.

Otto winced, but the presence of Benilo caused him to shake himself free of the Margrave's restraining hand.

"Stephania is waiting," he stammered.

"Then you will not grant my request?" Eckhardt spoke with quivering voice.

"In Rome we live,--in Rome we die!"

Taking Benilo's arm he hastened away, leaving Eckhardt to ponder over his prophetic words.

For a moment the Margrave remained, straining his gaze after Otto's retreating form.

His heart was heavy,--heavy to breaking. Dared he enter the arena against the Sorceress of Rome? He laughed aloud.

There are moments when the tragedy of our own life is almost amusing.

*CHAPTER VI*

*BEYOND THE GRAVE*

Eckhardt turned to go, but he had barely moved, when, as if risen from the earth, there stood before him the tall, veiled form of a woman, who whispered, flooding his face with her burning breath:

"I love you! Come! No one will see us!"

Eckhardt trembled in every limb. He would have known that voice, even if it had spoken to him from the depths of the grave. The heavy veil which shrouded the woman's face prevented him from scrutinizing her features.

"Who are you?" he stammered, just to say something. Swift as thought she threw her arms round him, but to recede as swiftly.

"Hurry! See how lonely it is! I love you! Come!"

"Who are you?"

"Can you not guess?"

He stretched out his arms toward her, but she gambolled before him, as a butterfly, flitting from flower to flower.

"Night of Love--night of madness," she whispered. "To-night, if you but will it, the secret is yours!"

Her voice thrilled him through and through. The perfume of the Poppy-flower sank benumbing into his heart. It was her voice,--it was her form,--was it but a mocking phantom,--what was it? Again she approached him.

"Lift the veil!" she spoke in a voice of command.

With trembling hand he started to obey, when the leaves of the nearest myrtle-bush began to rustle.

Eckhardt heard nothing, saw nothing.

As Benilo stepped into the moonlight, the apparition vanished like a dream phantom, but from the distance her laugh was heard, strange in some way, and ominous.

Eckhardt rushed after the fading vision like a madman.

Would it mock him for ever, wherever he was, wherever he went?

How long he had followed it, in headlong, breathless pursuit, as on that fateful eve, when it had lured him from the altars of Christ, he knew not. When he at last desisted from the mad and fruitless chase, he found himself at the base of the Capitoline Hill. Here were scattered the ruins of the old Mamertine prisons, once a series of cells rising in stages against the rock to a considerable height. Here were the baths of Mamertius, where Jugurtha, the Numidian, was starved. There Simon Bar Gioras, the Jew, was strangled, he, who to the last maintained the struggle against the victorious son of Vespasian. In the cell to the right Appius Claudius, the Triumvir, was said to have committed suicide. Another cell reechoed from the clangour of the chains of Simon Petrus. It was not a region where men tarried long, and few relished the fare of the low taverns, which were strung along the gray wall of Servius Tullius. For weird and dismal wails were at times to be heard in clear moonlight nights, and the region of the Capitoline Hill, cut by the old Gemonian stairs, was in ill repute, as in the days of Republican Rome.

He had not gone very far when he found himself before the entrance of a cavern, and Eckhardt's attention was caught by a strange red glow as from some fire within. As he gazed it died out, and he was left in doubt, whether it was an illusion of his imagination, or some phenomenon peculiar to the spot. The prisoners of the Roman state were no longer conveyed hither for safe-keeping, but confined in the dismal dungeons of Torre di Nona and Corte Savella. The glimmer he had seen could not therefore emanate from the cell of some unfortunate, here awaiting his sentence. Vainly he strained his gaze. All was darkness again within, and although the moon was high in a clear sky, set with innumerable stars, their distant glimmer could not penetrate the murky depths.

Eckhardt waited some minutes and the glimmer reappeared. What urged him onward to explore the cause of the strange light he could not have told. Still he dared not venture into the gloom without the aid of a torch. Quickly resolved he retraced his steps towards the few scattered houses, near the ancient wall, entered a dimly lighted, evil-smelling shop, purchased torch and flints and returned to the entrance of the cavern.

After lighting his torch he entered slowly and carefully, marking every step he took in the dust and sand, which covered the ground of the cave. The farther he advanced the more singular grew the spectacle which greeted his gaze.

The cavern was of great extent, composed of enormous masses of rocks, seemingly tossed together in chaotic confusion, and glittering all over in the blaze of innumerable irradiations, as with serpents of coloured light, so singularly brilliant and twisted were the stalactites which clustered within. There was one rock, in which a strong effort of the imagination might have shaped resemblance to a crucifix. Fastened to this by an iron rivet, a chain and a belt round his waist, lay the form of a man, apparently in a deadly swoon, as if exhausted from the struggle against the massive links. Some embers still burned near the prisoner and had probably been the means of attracting Eckhardt's attention.

Startled by the strange sight which encountered his gaze, Eckhardt eagerly surveyed the person of the prisoner. He appeared a man who had passed his prime, and his frame betokened a scholar rather than an athlete. His head being averted, Eckhardt was not able to scan his features.

At first Eckhardt was inclined to attribute the prisoner's plight to an attack by outlaws who had stripped him, and then, to secure secrecy and immunity, had left him to his fate. But a second consideration staggered this presumption, for as he raised his torch above the man's head, he discovered the tonsure which proclaimed him a monk, and what bandit, ever so desperate, would perpetrate a deed, which would consign his soul to purgatory for ever more? Besides, what wealth had a friar to tempt the avidity of a bravo?

Vainly puzzling his brain, as to the probable authorship of a deed, as dark as the identity of the hapless creature, thus securely fettered to the stone, he looked round. There was no vestige of drink or food; perhaps the man was starved and slowly expiring in the last throes of exhaustion. His breath came in rasping gasps and the short-cropped raven-blue hair slightly tinged with gray heightened the cadaverous tints of the body, which was of the colour of dried parchment.

The sudden flow of light, which flooded his eyes, perhaps long unaccustomed thereto, caused the prostrate man to writhe and to start from his swoon. His eyes, deeply sunk in their sockets, and flashing a strange delirious light, stared with awe and fear into the flame of the torch.

But no sooner had he encountered Eckhardt's gaze than he uttered a cry of dismay and would have relapsed into his swoon, had not the Margrave grasped him by the shoulder in an effort to support the weak, tottering body. But the cry had startled him, and so great was Eckhardt's dismay, that his fingers relaxed their hold and the man fell back, striking his head against the rock.

"I am dying--fetch me some water," he begged piteously and Eckhardt stepped outside of the cavern and filled his helmet from a well, whose crystal stream seemed to pour from the fissures of the Tarpeian rock. This he carried to the hapless wretch, raising his head and holding it to his lips. The prisoner drank greedily and stammered his thanks in a manner as if his tongue had swollen too big for his mouth.

There was a breathless silence, then Eckhardt said:

"I have sought you long--everywhere. How came you in this plight?"

The monk looked up. In his eyes there was a great fear.

"Pity--pity!" he muttered, vainly endeavouring to raise himself.

Eckhardt's stern gaze was his sole reply.

The ensuing silence seemed to both an eternity.

The monk could not bear the Margrave's gaze, and had closed his eyes.

"What of Ginevra?"

Slowly the words fell from Eckhardt's lips.

The monk groaned. His limbs writhed and strained against the chains that fettered him to the rock. But he made no reply.

"What of Ginevra?" Eckhardt repeated inexorably.

Still there came no answer.

Eckhardt stooped over the prostrate form like a spirit of vengeance descended from on high and so fiercely burned his gaze upon the monk that the latter vainly endeavoured to turn away his face. He could feel those eyes, even though his own were closed.

"You stand in the shadow of death," Eckhardt spoke, "You will never leave this cavern alive! Answer briefly and truthfully,--and I will have your body consigned to consecrated earth and masses said for your soul. Remain obdurate and rot where you lie, till the trumpet blast of resurrection day chases the worms from their loathsome feast!"

The dying man answered with a groan.

"What of Ginevra?" Eckhardt questioned for the third time.

The monk breathed hard. A tremor shook his limbs as he gasped:

"Ginevra--lives."

Eckhardt's hands went to his head. He closed his eyes in mortal agony and for a moment nothing but his heavy breathing was to be heard in the cavern. When he again looked down upon the prostrate man, he saw his lips turn purple, saw the film of death begin to cover his eyes. How much there was to be asked. How brief the time!

"You chanted the Requiem over the body of Ginevra, knowing her to be among the living?"

The monk nodded feebly.

Eckhardt's breath came hard. His breast heaved, as if it must burst and his hand shook so violently that some of the hot pitch from the taper struck the prisoner on the shoulder. He writhed with a groan.

"What prompted the hellish deceit?" Eckhardt continued. "Did she not have my love?"

The monk shook his head.

"It was not enough. It was not enough!"

"What more had I to give?"

"Marozia's inheritance--the emperor's tomb!"

"Marozia's inheritance?" Eckhardt repeated, like one in a dream. "The emperor's tomb? What madness is this? She never hinted at a wish unfulfilled."

"She asked you never to lift the veil from her past!"

The monk's words fell like a thunderbolt on Eckhardt's head.

"How came you by this knowledge?" he questioned aghast.

"Give me some water--I am choking," gasped the monk.

Again Eckhardt held the helmet to his lips, while he prayed that the spark of life might remain long enough in that enfeebled body, to clear the mystery, at whose brink he stood.

The monk drank greedily, and when his thirst seemed appeased the water ran out of the corners of his mouth. He again relapsed into a swoon; he heard Eckhardt's questions, but lacked strength to answer.

Stooping over him, Eckhardt grasped him by the shoulder and shook him mercilessly. He must not die, until he knew all.

A terrible certainty flashed through his mind.

This monk knew what was to him a seven times sealed book.

He had repeated to him Ginevra's wish,--now, nor heaven nor hell should turn him from his path.

"I thought,--Marozia's descendants were all dead," he said, fear and hesitation in his tones.

The monk feebly shook his head.

"One lives,--the deadliest of the flock."

A chill as of death seemed to benumb Eckhardt's limbs.

"One lives," he gasped. "Her name?"

Delirium seemed to have seized the prostrate wretch. He mumbled strange words while his fingers were digging into the sand, as if he were preparing his own grave.

"Her name!" thundered Eckhardt into the monk's ear.

The latter raised himself straight up and stared at the Margrave with dead, expressionless eyes.

"In the world, Ginevra,--beyond the grave--Theodora!"

"Theodora!" A groan broke from Eckhardt's lips.

"And is this her work?"

He pointed to the monk's chains, and the iron rivets driven into the rocks.

The monk shook his head. The spark of life flickered up once more.

"Five days without food,--without water,--left here to perish--by a villain--whom the lightnings of heaven may blast--the betrayer of God and of man,--I am dying,--remember,--burial--masses--"

The monk fell back with a gasp. The death-rattle was in his throat.

Eckhardt knelt by his side, raised his head and tried to stem the fleeting tide of life.

"His name! His name!" he shrieked, mad with fear, anguish and despair. "His name! Oh God, let him live but long enough for that,--his name?"

It was too late.

The spark of life had gone out. The murderer of Gregory stood before a higher bar of judgment.

There was a long silence in the rock caves under the Gemonian Stairs. Nothing was to be heard, save the hard breathing of the despairing man. He saw it all now,--all, but the instigator, the abettor of the terrible crime against him. If Ginevra was indeed the last link in that long chain of infamy, which had held its high revels in Castel San Angelo during the past decades, she could never hope to come into her own without some potent ally. The thought lay very near, that she might be intriguing in this very hour to regain the lost power of Marozia. But a second consideration at least staggered this theory. It rather seemed as if the man on whom she had relied for the realization of her terrible ambition had deceived her, after he had made her his own,--or had in some way failed to keep his pledge,--until, in the endeavour to find the support she required, she had sunk from the arms of one into those of another.

A wild shriek resounded through the cavern.

Eckhardt trembled at the sound of his own despair.

Like a caged, wild beast he paced up and down in the darkness.

The torch had fallen from his grasp and continued to glimmer on the sand.

Had it lain within his power he would have shaken down the mighty rock over his head and buried himself with the hapless victim chained to the stone.

In vain he tried to order his chaotic thoughts.

Monstrous deception she had practised upon him!

All her endearments, all her caresses, her kisses, her whisperings of love,--were they but the threads of the one vast fabric of a lie?

It seemed too monstrous to be true; it seemed too monstrous to grasp!

And all for what?

The fleeting phantom of dominion, which must vanish as it came--unsatisfied.

How long he remained thus, he knew not. His torch had well nigh burnt down when at length he roused himself from his deadly stupor. Groping his way to the entrance of the cave, he stepped into the open.

Like one dazed he returned to his palace.

But he could not sleep.

Profound were the emotions, which were awakened in his bosom, as he set foot within his chamber. Scenes of other days arose before him with the vividness of reality. He beheld himself again in the full vigour of manhood, ardent, impassioned, blessed with the hand of the woman he loved and anticipating a cloudless future. He beheld her as she was when he first called her his own, young, proud, beautiful. Her accents were those of endearment, her looks tenderness and love. They smote him now like a poniard's point driven to his very heart. He did not think he could have borne a pang so keen and live.

Why,--he asked in despair--could not the past be recalled or for ever cancelled? Why could not men live their loves over again, to repair, what they might have omitted, neglected and regain their lost happiness?

Pressing his hands before his eyes, he tried to shut out the beautiful, agonizing vision.

It could not be excluded.

Staggering towards a chair, he sank upon it, a prey to unbearable anguish. Avenging furies beset him and lashed him with whips of steel.

He could not rest. He strode about the room. He even thought of quitting the house, denouncing himself as a madman for having come here at all. But where was he to go? He must endure the tortures. Perhaps they would subside. Little hope of it.

He walked to the fire-place. The air of autumn was chill without. The embers, still glowing with a crimson reflection, had sunk in the grate. Aye--there he stood, where he had stood years ago, and oh, how unlike his former self! How different in feeling! Then he had some youth left, at least, and hope. Now he was crushed by the weight of a mystery which haunted him night and day. Could he but quit Rome! Could he but induce the king to return beyond the Alps. Little doubt, that under the immense gray sky, which formed so fitting a cupola for his grief, his soul might find rest. Here, with the feverish pulses of life beating madly round him, here, vegetating without purpose, without aim, he felt he would eventually go mad. He had inhaled the poison of the poppy-flower:--he was doomed.

Eckhardt did not attempt to court repose. Sleep was out of the question in his present wrought-up state of mind. Then wherefore seek his couch until he was calmer?

Calmer!

Could he ever be calm again, till his brain had ceased to work and his heart to beat? Should he ever know profound repose until he slept the sleep of death?

Yet what was to insure him rest even within the tomb? Might he not encounter her in the beyond,--a thing apart from him through all eternity? During the brief period while he had cherished the thought of disappearing from the world for ever, he had pondered over many problems, which neither monk nor philosophers had been able to solve.

Could we but know what would be our lot after death!

There was a time, when he had rebelled against the thought that our footsteps are filled up and obliterated, as we pass on, like in a quicksand.

There was a time, he could not bear to think, that yesterday was indeed banished and gone for ever,--that a to-morrow must come of black and endless night.

And now he craved for nothing more than annihilation, complete unrelenting annihilation. He knew not what he believed. He knew not what he doubted. He knew not what he denied.

He was on the verge of madness.

And the devil was busy in his heart, suggesting a solution he had hitherto shunned. The thought filled him with dread, tossing him to and fro on a tempestuous sea of doubt and yet pointing to no other refuge from black despair.

He strove to resist the dread suggestion, but it grew upon him with fearful force and soon bore down all opposition.

If all else failed--why not leap over the dark abyss?

A dreadful calm succeeded his agitation. It was vain to puzzle his brain with a solution of the problem which confronted him, a problem which mocked to scorn his efforts and his prayers.

He closed his eyes, vainly groping for an escape from the dreadful labyrinth of doubt, and sinking deeper and deeper into rumination. Nature at last asserted her rights, and he fell into fitful, uneasy slumbers, in which all the misery of his life seemed to sweep afresh through his heart and to uproot the remotest depths of his tortured soul.

When Eckhardt woke from his stupor, the gray dawn was breaking. As he started up, a face which had appeared against the window quickly vanished. Was it but part of his dream or had he seen Benilo, the Chamberlain?

*CHAPTER VII*

*ARA COELI*

It was not till late that night, that Otto found himself alone. He had at last withdrawn from the maddening revelry. Silence was falling on the streets of Rome and the dimness of midnight upon the sky, through which blazing meteors had torn their brilliant furrows. After dismissing his attendants, the son of Theophano sat alone in the lonely chamber of his palace on the Aventine. A sense of death-like desolation had come over him. Never had the palace seemed so vast and so silent. And he--he, the lord of it all--he had no loving heart to turn to, no one, that understood him with a woman's intuition. The waves of destiny seemed to close over him and the circumstances of his past rose poignant and vivid before his fading sight.

But uppermost in his soul was the certainty that he could not further behold Stephania with impunity. When he recalled the meeting in the Minotaurus and the subsequent events of the evening, he lost all peace of mind. What then would be the result of a new meeting? What would become of him, should he thereafter find himself unable to contain his passion in darkness and in silence? Would he exhibit to the world the ridiculous spectacle of an insane lover, or would he, by some unheedful action, bring down upon himself the disdainful pity of the woman, unable as he was to resist the vertigo of her fascination?

He gazed out into the moonlit night. The ancient monuments stood out mournful and deserted as a line of tombs. The city seemed a graveyard, and himself but a disembodied ghost of the dead past.

Gradually the hour laid its tranquillizing hush upon him. By degrees, with the dim light of the candles, he grew drowsy. His mental images became more and more indistinct, and he gradually drifted away into the land of dreams. After a time he was awakened by a light that shone upon his face. Starting up, Otto was for a moment overcome by a strange sensation of faintness, which vanished as he gazed into the face of Benilo, whom his anxiety had carried to the side of the King after having in vain searched for him among the late revellers on the Capitoline hill.

Otto smiled at the expression of anxiety in the Roman's face.

"'Twas naught, save that I was weary," he replied to Benilo's concerned inquiry. "'Tis many a week since we revelled so late. But perchance you had best leave me now, that I may rest."

Benilo withdrew and Otto fell into a fitful slumber filled with hazy visions, in which the persons of Crescentius and Stephania were strangely mingled, melting rapidly from one into the other.

He slept later than usual on the following day. When the shadows of evening began to fall over the undulating expanse of the Roman Campagna, Otto left the palace on the Aventine by a postern gate. This hour he wished to be free from all affairs of state, from all intrusions and cares. This hour he wished fitly to prepare himself for the great work of his life. In the dreamy solitude he would question his own heart as to his future course with regard to Stephania.

The evening was serene and fair. The brick skeletons of arches, vaults and walls glowed fiery in the rays of the sinking sun. Among olives and acanthus was heard the bleating of sheep and the chirrup of the grasshopper.

Otto descended the tangled foot-path on the northern slope of the Aventine, not far from the gardens of Capranica, and soon reached the foot of the Capitoline hill, the ruins of the temple of Saturnus, the place where in the days of glory had stood the ancient Forum. From the arch of Septimius Severus as far as the Flavian Amphitheatre the Via Sacra was flanked with wretched hovels. Their foundations were formed of fragments of statues, of the limbs and torsos of Olympian gods. For centuries the Forum had been a quarry. Christian churches languished on the ruins of pagan shrines. Still lofty columns soared upward through the desolation, carrying sculptured architraves, last traces of a vanished art. Here a feudal tower leaned against the arch of Titus; beside it a tavern befouled the fallen columns, the marble slabs, the half defaced inscription. Behind it rose the arch, white and pure, less shattered than the remaining monuments. The sunlight streaming through it from the direction of the Capitol lighted up the bas-relief of the Emperor's triumph, the malodorous curls of smoke from the tavern appearing like clouds of incense.

Otto's heart beat fast as, turning once more into the Forum, he heard the dreary jangling of bells from the old church of Santa Maria Liberatrice, sounding the Angelus. It seemed to him like a dirge over the fallen greatness of Rome. Half unconsciously he directed his steps toward the Coliseum. Seating himself on the broken steps of the Amphitheatre, he gazed up at the blue heavens, shining through the gaps in the Coliseum walls.

Sudden flushes of crimson flamed up in the western horizon. Slowly the sun was sinking to rest. A pale yellow moon had sailed up from behind the stupendous arches of Constantine's Basilica, severing with her disk a bed of clouds, transparent and delicately tinted as sea-shells. The three columns in front of Santa Maria Liberatrice shone like phantoms in the waning light of evening. And the bell sounding the Christian Angelus seemed more than ever like a dirge over the forgotten Rome of the past.

Wrapt in deep reveries, Otto continued upon his way. He had lost all sense of life and reality. It was one of those moments when time and the world seem to stand still, drifting away on those delicate imperceptible lines that lie between reality and dream-land. And the solitary rambler gave himself up to the half painful, half delicious sense of being drawn in, absorbed and lost in infinite imaginings, when the intense stillness around him was broken by the peals of distant convent bells, ringing with silvery clearness through the evening calm.

Suddenly Otto paused, all his life-blood rushing to his heart.

At the lofty flight of stairs, by which the descent is made from Ara Coeli, stood Stephania.

She had come out of the venerable church, filled with the devout impressions of the mass just recited. The chant still rang in her ears as she passed down the long line of uneven pillars, which we see to-day, and across the sculptured tombs set in the pavement which the reverential tread of millions has worn to smooth indistinctness. Now the last rays of the sun flooded all about her, mellowing the tints of verdure and drooping foliage, and softening the outlines of the Alban hills.

As she looked down she saw the German king and met his upturned gaze. For a moment she seemed to hesitate. The sunlight fell on her pale face and touched with fire the dark splendour of her hair. Slowly she descended the long flight of stairs.

They faced each other in silence and Otto had leisure to steal a closer look at her. He was struck by the touch of awe which had suddenly come upon her beauty. Perhaps the evening light spiritualized her pure and lofty countenance, for as Otto looked upon her it seemed to him that she was transformed into a being beyond earthly contact and his heart sank with a sense of her remoteness.

Timidly he lifted her hand and pressed his lips upon it.