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.

Silence intervened, a silence freighted with the weight of suspended

destinies. There was indeed more to be felt between them, than to be

said. But what mattered it, so the hour was theirs? The narrow kingdom

of to-day is better worth ruling than the widest sweep of past and

future, but not more than once does man hold its fugitive sceptre. Otto

felt the nearness of that penetrating sympathy, which is almost a gift

of divination. The mere thought of her had seemed to fill the air with

her presence.

Steadily, searchingly, she gazed at the thoughtful and earnest

countenance of Otto, then she spoke with a touch of domineering

haughtiness:

"Why are you here?"

He met her gaze eye in eye.

"I was planning for the future of Rome,--and dreaming of the past."

She bent her proud head, partly in acknowledgment of his words, partly

to conceal her own confusion.

"The past is buried," she replied coldly, "and the future dark and

uncertain."

"And why may it not be mine,--to revive that past?"

"No sunrise can revive that which has died in the sunset glow."

"Then you too despair of Rome ever being more than a memory of her dead

self?"

She looked at him amusedly.

"I am living in the world--not in a dream."

Otto pointed to the Capitoline hill.

"Yet see how beautiful it is, this Rome of the past!" he spoke with

repressed enthusiasm. "Is it not worth braving the dangers of the

avalanches that threaten to crush rider and horse--even the wrath of

your countrymen, who see in us but unbidden, unwelcome invaders? Ah!

Little do they know the magic which draws us hither to their sunny

shores from the gloom of our Northern forests! Little they know the

transformation this land of flowers works on the frozen heart, that

yearns for your glowing, sun-tinted vales!"

"Why did you come to Rome?" she questioned curtly. "To remind us of

these trifles,--and incidentally to dispossess us of our time-honoured

rights and power?"

Otto shook his head.

"I came not to Rome to deprive the Romans of their own,--rather to

restore to them what they have almost forgotten--their glorious past."

"It is useless to remind those who do not wish to be reminded," she

replied. "The avalanche of centuries has long buried memory and

ambition in those you are pleased to call Romans. Desist, I beg of you,

to pursue a phantom which will for ever elude you, and return beyond the

Alps to your native land!"

"And Stephania prefers this request?" Otto faltered, turning pale.

"Stephania--the consort of the Senator of Rome."

There was a pause.

Through the overhanging branches glimmered the pale disk of the moon. A

soft breeze stirred the leaves of the trees. There was a hushed

breathlessness in the air. Fantastic, dream-like, light and shadows

played on the majestic tide of the Tiber, and all over the high summits

of the hills mysterious shapes, formed of purple and gray mists, rose up

and crept softly downward, winding in and out the valleys, like

wandering spirits, sent on some hidden, sorrowful errand.

Gazing up wistfully, Stephania saw the look of pain in Otto's face.

"I ask what I have," she said softly, "because I know the temper of my

countrymen."

"What would you make of me?" he replied. "On this alone my heart is

set. Take it from me,--I would drift an aimless barque on the tide of

time."

She shook her head but avoided his gaze.

"You aim to accomplish the impossible. Crows do not feed on the living,

and the dead do not rise again. Ah! How, if your miracle does not

succeed?"

Otto drew himself up to his full height.

"Gloria Victis,--but before my doom, I shall prove worthy of myself."

Suddenly a strange thought came over him.

"Stephania," he faltered, "what do you want with me?"

"I want you to be frankly my foe," exclaimed the beautiful wife of

Crescentius. "You must not pass by like this, without telling me that

you are. You speak of a past. Sometimes I think it were better, if

there had been no past. Better burn a corpse than leave it unburied.

All the friends of my dreams are here,--their shades surround us,--in

their company one grows afraid as among the shroudless dead. It is

impossible. You cannot mean the annihilation of the past, you cannot

mean to be against Rome--against me!"

Otto faced her, pale and silent, vainly striving to speak. He dared not

trust himself. As he stepped back, she clutched his arm.

"Tell me that you are my enemy," she said, with heart-broken challenge

in her voice.

"Stephania!"

"Tell me that you hate me."

"Stephania--why do you ask it?"

"To justify my own ends," she replied. Then she covered her face with

her hands.

"Tell me all," she sobbed. "I must know all. Do you not feel how near

we are? Are you indeed afraid to speak?"

She gazed at him with moist, glorious eyes.

Striding up and down before the woman, Otto vainly groped for words.

"Otto," she approached him gently, "do you believe in me?"

"Can you ask?"

"Wholly?"

"What do you mean?"

"I thought,--feared,--that you suffered from the same malady as we

Romans."

"What malady?"

"Distrust."

There was a pause.

"The temple is beautiful in the moonlight," Stephania said at last.

"They tell me you like relics of the olden time. Shall we go there?"

Otto's heart beat heavily as by her side he strode down the narrow path.

They approached a little ruined temple, which ivy had invaded and

overrun. Fragments lay about in the deep grass. A single column only

remained standing and its lonely capital, clear cut as the petals of a

lily, was outlined in clear silhouette against the limpid azure.

At last he spoke--with a voice low and unsteady.

"Be not too hard on me, Stephania, for my love of the world that lies

dead around us. I scarcely can explain it to you. The old simple

things stir strange chords within me. I love the evening more than the

morning, autumn better than spring. I love all that is fleeting, even

the perfume of flowers that have faded, the pleasant melancholy, the

golden fairy-twilight. Remembrance has more power over my soul than

hope."

"Tell me more," Stephania whispered, her head leaning back against the

column and a smile playing round her lips. "Tell me more. These are

indeed strange sounds to my ear. I scarcely know if I understand them."

He gazed upon her with burning eyes.

"No--no! Why more empty dreams, that can never be?"

She pointed in silence to the entrance of the temple.

Otto held out both hands, to assist her in descending the sloping rock.

She appeared nervous and uncertain of foot. Hurriedly and agitated,

anxious to gain the entrance she slipped and nearly fell. In the next

moment she was caught up in his arms and clasped passionately to his

heart.

"Stephania--Stephania," he whispered, "I love you--I love you! Away

with every restraint! Let them slay me, if they will, by every death my

falsehood deserves,--but let it be here,--here at your feet."

Stephania trembled like an aspen in his strong embrace, and strove to

release herself, but he pressed her more closely to him, scarcely

knowing that he did so, but feeling that he held the world, life,

happiness and salvation in this beautiful Roman. His brain was in a

whirl; everything seemed blotted out,--there was no universe, no

existence, no ambition, nothing but love,--love,--love,--beating through

every fibre of his frame.

The woman was very pale.

Timidly she lifted her head. He gazed at her in speechless suspense; he

saw as in a vision the pure radiance of her face, the star-like eyes

shining more and more closely into his. Then came a touch, soft and

sweet as a rose-leaf pressed against his lips and for one moment he

remembered nothing. Like Paris of old, he was caught up in a cloud of

blinding gold, not knowing which was earth, which heaven.

For a moment nothing was to be heard, save the hard breathing of these

two, then Otto held Stephania off at an arm's length, gazing at her, his

soul in his eyes.

"You are more beautiful than the angels," he whispered.

"The fallen angels," was her smiling reply.

Then with a quick, spontaneous movement she flung her bare arms round

his neck and drew him toward her.

"And if I did come toward you to prophesy glory and the fulfilment of

your dreams?" she murmured, even as a sibyl. "You alone are alive among

the dead! What matters it to me that your love is hopeless, that our

wings are seared? My love is all for the rejected! I love the proud and

solitary eagle better than the stained vulture."

He felt the fire of the strange insatiate kiss of her lips and reeled.

It seemed as if the Goddess of Love in the translucence of the moon, had

descended, embracing him, mocking to scorn the anguish that consumed his

heart, but to vanish again in the lunar shadows.

"Stephania--" he murmured reeling, drunk with the sweetness of her lips.

Never perhaps had the beautiful Roman bestowed on mortal man such a

glance, as now beamed from her eyes upon the youth. The perfume of her

hair intoxicated his senses. Her breath was on his cheek, her sweet

lips scarce a hand's breath from his own.

Had Lucifer, the prince of darkness, himself appeared at this moment, or

Crescentius started up like a ghost from the gaping stone floor,

Stephania could scarcely have changed as suddenly as she did, to the

cold impassive rigidity of marble. Following the direction of her stony

gaze, Otto beheld emerging as it were from the very rocks above him a

dark face and mailed figure, which he recognized as Eckhardt's. Whether

or not the Margrave was conscious of having thus unwittingly interrupted

an interview,--if he had seen, his own instincts at once revealed to him

the danger of his position. Eckhardt's countenance wore an expression of

utter unconcern, as he passed on and vanished in the darkness.

For a moment Otto and Stephania gazed after his retreating form.

"He has seen nothing," Otto reassured her.

"To-morrow," she replied, "we meet here again at the hour of the

Angelas. And then," she added changing her tone to one of deepest

tenderness, "I will test your love,--your constancy,--your loyalty."

They faced each other in a dead silence.

"Do not go," he faltered, extending his hands.

She slowly placed her own in them. It was a moment upon which hung the

fate of two lives. Otto felt her weakness in her look, in the touch of

her hands, which shivered, as they lay in his, as captive birds. And

the long smothered cry leaped forth from his heart: What was crown,

life, glory--without love! Why not throw it all away for a caress of

that hand? What mattered all else?

But the woman became strong as he grew weak.

"Go!" she said faintly. "Farewell,--till to-morrow."

He dropped her hands, his eyes in hers.

Giving one glance backward, where Eckhardt had disappeared, Stephania

first began to move with hesitating steps, then seized by an

irresistible panic, she gathered up her trailing robe and ran

precipitately up the steep path, her fleeting form soon disappearing in

the moonlight.

Otto remained another moment, then he too stepped out into the clear

moonlit night. In silent rumination he continued his way toward the

Aventine.

Past and future seemed alike to have vanished for him. Time seemed to

have come to a stand-still.

Suddenly he imagined that a shadow stealthily crossed his path. He

paused, turned--but there was no one.

Calmly the stars looked down upon him from the azure vault of heaven.

And like a spider in his web, Johannes Crescentius sat in Castel San

Angelo.

*CHAPTER VIII*

*THE GOTHIC TOWER*

Deep quiet reigned in the city, when a man, enveloped in a mantle, whose

dimly shadowed form was outlined against the massive, gray walls of

Constantine's Basilica glided slowly and cautiously from among the

blocks of stone scattered round its foundations and advanced to the

fountain which then formed the centre of the square, where the Obelisk

now stands. There he stopped and, concealed by the obscurity of the

night and the deeper shadows of the monument, glanced furtively about,

as if to be sure that he was unobserved. Then drawing his sword, he

struck three times upon the pavement, producing at each stroke light

sparks from its point. This signal, for such it was, was forthwith

answered. From the remote depths of the ruins the cry of the

screech-owl was thrice in succession repeated, and, guided by the

ringing sound, a second figure emerged from the weeds, which were in

some places the height of a man. Obeying the signal of the first comer,

the second, who was likewise enveloped in a mantle, silently joined him

and together they proceeded half-way down the Borgo Vecchio, then turned

to the right and entered a street, at the remote extremity of which

there was a figure of the Madonna with its lamp.

Onward they walked with rapid steps, traversed the Borgo Santo Spirito

and followed the street Della Lingara to where it opens upon the church

Regina Coeli. After having pursued their way for some time in silence

they entered a narrow winding path, which conducted them through a

deserted valley, the silence of which was only broken by the occasional

hoot of an owl or the fitful flight of a bat. In the distance could be

heard the splashing of water from the basin of a fountain, half obscured

by vines and creepers, from which a thin, translucent stream was pouring

and bubbling down the Pincian hillsides in the direction of Santa

Trinita di Monte.

They lost themselves in a maze of narrow and little frequented lanes,

until at last they found themselves before a gray, castellated building,

half cloister, half fortress, rising out of the solitudes of the

Flaminian way, before which they stopped. Over the massive door were

painted several skeletons in the crude fashion of the time, standing

upright with mitres, sceptres and crowns upon their heads, holding

falling scrolls, with faded inscriptions in their bony grasp.

The one, who appeared to be the moving spirit of the two, knocked in a

peculiar manner at the heavy oaken door. After a wait of some duration

they heard the creaking of hinges. Slowly the door swung inward and

closed immediately behind them. They entered a gloomy passage. A

number of owls, roused by the dim light from the lantern of the warden,

began to fly screeching about, flapping their wings against the walls

and uttering strange cries. After ascending three flights of stairs,

preceded by the warden, whose appearance was as little inviting as his

abode, they paused before a chamber, the door of which their guide had

pushed open, remaining himself on the threshold, while his two visitors

entered.

"How is the girl?" questioned the foremost in a whisper, to which the

warden made whispered reply.

Beckoning his companion to follow him, the stranger then passed into the

room, which was dimly illumined by the flickering light of a taper.

Throwing off his mantle, Eckhardt surveyed with a degree of curiosity

the apartment and its scanty furnishings. Nothing could be more dreary

than the aspect of the place. The richly moulded ceiling was festooned

with spiders' webs and in some places had fallen in heaps upon the

floor. The glories of Byzantine tapestry had long been obliterated by

age and time. The squares of black and white marble with which the

chamber was paved were loosened and quaked beneath the foot-steps and

the wide and empty fireplace yawned like the mouth of a cavern.

Straining his gaze after the harper who was bending over a couch in a

remote corner of the room, Eckhardt was about to join him when Hezilo

approached him.

"Would you like to see?" he asked, his eyes full of tears.

Eckhardt bowed gravely, and with gentle foot-steps they approached a bed

in the corner of the room, on which there reposed the figure of a girl,

lying so still and motionless that she might have been an image of wax.

Her luxurious brown hair was spread over the pillow and out of this

frame the pinched white face with all its traces of past beauty looked

out in pitiful silence. One thin hand was turned palm downward on the

coverlet, and as they approached the fingers began to work convulsively.

Hezilo bent over her, and touched her brow with his lips.

"Little one," he said, "do you sleep?"

The girl opened her sightless eyes, and a faint smile, that illumined

her face, making it wondrously beautiful, passed over her countenance.

"Not yet," she spoke so low that Eckhardt could scarcely catch the

words, "but I shall sleep soon."

He knew what she meant, for in her face was already that look which

comes to those who are going away. Hezilo looked down upon her in

silence, but even as he did so a change for the worse seemed to come to

the sick girl, and they became aware that the end had begun. He tried

to force some wine between her lips, but she could not swallow, and now,

instead of lying still, she continued tossing her head from side to

side. Hezilo was undone. He could do nothing but stand at the head of

the bed in mute despair, as he watched the parting soul of his child sob

its way out.

"Angiola--Angiola--do not leave me--do not go from me!" the harper cried

in heart-rending anguish, kneeling down before the bed of the girl and

taking her cold, clammy hands into his own. Impelled by a power he

could not resist, Eckhardt knelt and tried to form some words to reach

the Most High. But they would not come; he could only feel them, and he

rose again and took his stand by the dying girl.

She now began to talk in a rambling manner and with that strength which

comes at the point of death from somewhere; her voice was clear but with

a metallic ring. What Eckhardt gathered from her broken words, was a

story of trusting love, of infamous wrong, of dastardly crime. And the

harper shook like a branch in the wind as the words came thick and fast

from the lips of his dying child. After a while she became still--so

still, that they both thought she had passed away. But she revived on a

sudden and called out:

"Father,--I cannot see,--I am blind,--stoop down and let me whisper--"

"I am here little one, close--quite close to you!"

"Tell him,--I forgive-- And you forgive him too--promise!"

The harper pressed his lips to the damp forehead of his child but spoke

no word.

"It is bright again--they are calling me--Mother! Hold me up--I cannot

breathe."

Hezilo sank on his knees with his head between his hands, shaken by

convulsive sobs, while Eckhardt wound his arm round the dying girl, and

as he lifted her up the spirit passed. In the room there was deep

silence, broken only by the harper's heart-rending sobs. He staggered

to his feet with despair in his face.

"She said forgive!" he exclaimed with broken voice. "Man--you have seen

an angel die!"

"Who is the author of her death?" Eckhardt questioned, his hands so

tightly clenched, that he almost drove the nails into his own flesh.

If ever words changed the countenance of man, the Margrave's question

transformed the harper's grief into flaming wrath.

"A devil, a fiend, who first outraged, then cast her forth blinded, to

die like a reptile," he shrieked in his mastering grief. "Surely God

must have slept, while this was done!"

There was a breathless hush in the death-chamber.

Hezilo was bending over the still face of his child. The dead girl lay

with her hands crossed over her bosom, still as if cut out of marble and

on her face was fixed a sad little smile.

At last the harper arose.

Staggering to the door he gave some whispered instructions to the

individual who seemed to fill the office of warden, then beckoned

silently to Eckhardt to follow him and together they descended the

narrow winding stairs.

"I will return late--have everything prepared," the harper at parting

turned to the warden, who had preceded them with his lantern. The

latter nodded gloomily, then he retraced his steps within, locking the

door behind him.

Under the nocturnal starlit sky, Eckhardt breathed more freely. For a

time they proceeded in silence, which the Margrave was loth to break.

He had long recognized in the harper the mysterious messenger who in

that never-to-be-forgotten night had conducted him to the groves of

Theodora, and who he instinctively felt had been instrumental in saving

his life. Something told him that the harper possessed the key to the

terrible mystery he had in vain endeavoured to fathom, yet his thoughts

reverted ever and ever to the scene in the tower and to the dead girl

Angiola, and he dreaded to break into the harper's grief.

They had arrived at the place of the Capitol. It was deserted. Not a

human being was to be seen among the ruins, which the seven-hilled city

still cloaked with her ancient mantle of glory. Dark and foreboding the

colossal monument of the Egyptian lion rose out of the nocturnal gloom.

The air was clear but chill, the starlight investing the gray and

towering form of basalt with a more ghostly whiteness. At the sight of

the dread memory from the mystic banks of the Nile, Eckhardt could not

suppress a shudder; a strange oppression laid its benumbing hand upon

him.

Involuntarily he paused, plunged in gloomy and foreboding thoughts, when

the touch of the harper's hand upon his shoulder caused him to start

from his sombre reverie.

Drawing the Margrave into the shadow of the pedestal, which supported

the grim relic of antiquity, Hezilo at last broke the silence. He spoke

slowly and with strained accents.

"The scene you were permitted to witness this night has no doubt

convinced you that I have a mission to perform in Rome. Our goal is the

same, though we approach it from divergent points. They say man's fate

is pre-ordained, irrevocable, unchangeable--from the moment of his

birth. A gloomy fantasy, yet not a baseless dream. By a strange

succession of events the thread of our destiny has been interwoven, and

the knowledge which you would acquire at any cost, it is in my power to

bestow."

"Of this I felt convinced, since some strange chance brought us face to

face," Eckhardt replied gloomily.

"'Twas something more than chance," replied the harper. "You too felt

the compelling hand of Fate."

"What of the awful likeness?" Eckhardt burst forth, hardly able to

restrain himself at the maddening thought, and feeling instinctively

that he should at last penetrate the web of lies, though ever so finely

spun.

The harper laid a warning finger on his lips.

"You deemed her but Ginevra's counterfeit?"

"Ginevra! Ginevra!" Eckhardt, disregarding the harper's caution,

exclaimed in his mastering agony. "What know you of her? Speak! Tell

me all! What of her?"

"Silence!" enjoined his companion. "How know we what these ruins

conceal? I guided you to the Groves at the woman's behest. What

interest could she have in your destruction?"

Eckhardt was supporting himself against the pedestal of the Egyptian

lion, listening as one dazed to the harper's words. Then he broke into a

jarring laugh.

"Which of us is mad?" he cried. "Wherein did I offend the woman? She

plied but the arts of her trade."

"You are speaking of Ginevra," replied the harper.

"Ginevra," growled Eckhardt, his hair bristling and his eyes flaming as

those of an infuriated tiger while his fingers gripped the hilt of his

dagger.

"You are speaking of Ginevra!" the harper repeated inexorably.

With a moan Eckhardt's hands went to his head. His breast heaved; his

breath came and went in quick gasps.

"I do not understand,--I do not understand."

"You made no attempt to revisit the Groves," said the harper.

Eckhardt stroked his brow as if vainly endeavouring to recall the past.

"I feared to succumb to her spell."

"To that end you had been summoned."

"I have since been warned. Yet it seemed too monstrous to be true."

"Warned? By whom?"

"Cyprianus, the monk!"

The harper's face turned livid.

"No blacker wretch e'er strode the streets of Rome. And he confessed?"

"A death-bed confession, that makes the devils laugh," Eckhardt replied,

then he briefly related the circumstances which had led him into the

deserted region of the Tarpeian Rock and his chance discovery of the

monk, whose strange tale had been cut short by death.

"He has walked long in death's shadow," said the harper. "Fate was too

kind, too merciful to the slayer of Gregory."

There was a brief pause, during which neither spoke. At last the harper

broke the silence.

"The hour of final reckoning is near,--nearer than you dream, the hour

when a fiend, a traitor must pay the penalty of his crimes, the hour

which shall for ever more remove the shadow from your life. The task

required of you is great; you may not approach it as long as a breath of

doubt remains in your heart. Only certainty can shape your unrelenting

course. Had Ginevra a birth-mark?"

Eckhardt breathed hard.

"The imprint of a raven-claw on her left arm below the shoulder."

Hezilo nodded. A strange look had passed into his eyes.

"There is a means--to obtain the proof."

"I am ready!" replied Eckhardt with quivering lips.

"If you will swear on the hilt of this cross, to be guarded by my

counsel, to let nothing induce you to reveal your identity, I will help

you," said the harper.

Eckhardt touched the proffered cross, nodding wearily. His heart was

heavy to breaking, as the harper slowly outlined his plan.

"The woman has been seized by a mortal dread of her betrayer,--the man

who wrecked her life and yours. No questions now,--this is neither the

hour or the place! In time you shall know, in time you shall be free to

act! Acting upon my counsel, she has bid me summon to her presence a

sooth-sayer, one Dom Sabbat, who dwells in the gorge between Mounts

Testaccio and Aventine. To him I am to carry these horoscopes and

conduct him to the Groves on the third night before the full of the

moon."

The harper's voice sank to a whisper, while Eckhardt listened

attentively, nodding repeatedly in gloomy silence.

"On that night I shall await you in the shadows of the temple of Isis.

There a boat will lie in waiting to convey us to the water stairs of her

palace."

The harper extended his hand, wrapping himself closer in his mantel.

"The third night before the full of the moon!" he said. "Leave me now, I

implore you, that I may care for my dead. Remember the time, the place,

and your pledge!"

Eckhardt grasped the proffered hand and they parted.

The harper strode away in the direction of the gorge below Mount

Aventine, while Eckhardt, oppressed by strange forebodings, shaped his

course towards his own habitation on the Caelian Mount.

Neither had seen two figures in black robes, that lingered in the

shadows of the Lion of Basalt.

No sooner had Eckhardt and Hezilo departed, than they slowly emerged,

standing revealed in the star-light as Benilo and John of the Catacombs.

For a moment they faced each other with meaning gestures, then they too

strode off in the opposite directions, Benilo following the harper on

his singular errand, while the bravo fastened himself to the heels of

the Margrave, whom he accompanied like his own shadow, only

relinquishing his pursuit when Eckhardt entered the gloomy portals of

his palace.

*CHAPTER IX*

*THE SNARE OF THE FOWLER*

While these events transpired in Rome, a feverish activity prevailed in

Castel San Angelo. In day time the huge mausoleum presented the same

sullen and forbidding aspect as ever but without revealing a trace of

the preparations, which were being pushed to a close within. Under

cover of night the breaches had been repaired; huge balistae and

catapults had been placed in position on the ramparts, and the fortress

had been rendered almost impregnable to assault, as in the time of

Vitiges, the Goth.

Events were swiftly approaching the fatal crisis. While Otto languished

in the toils of Stephania, whose society became more and more

indispensable to him, while with pernicious flattery Benilo closed the

ear of the king to the cries of his German subjects and estranged him

more and more from his leaders, his country, and his hosts, while

Eckhardt vainly strove to arouse Otto to the perils lurking in his utter

abandonment to Roman councillors and Roman polity, the Senator of Rome

had introduced into Hadrian's tomb a sufficiently strong body of men,

not only to withstand a siege, but to vanquish any force, however

superior to his own, to frustrate any assault, however ably directed.

While the German contingents remained on Roman soil he dared not engage

his enemy in a last death-grapple for the supremacy over the Seven

Hills, which Otto's war-worn veterans from the banks of the Elbe and

Vistula had twice wrested from him. The final draw in the great game

was at hand. On this day the envoys of the Electors would arrive in

Rome to demand Otto's immediate return to his German crown-lands, whose

eastern borders were sorely menaced by the ever recurring inroads of

Poles and Magyars. In the event of Otto's refusing compliance with the

Electoral mandate, Count Ludeger of the Palatinate was to relieve

Eckhardt of his command and to lead the German contingents back across

the Alps.

But it was no part of the Senator's policy to permit Otto to return.

For while there remained breath in the youth, Rome remained the Fata

Morgana of his dreams, and Crescentius remained the vassal of

Theophano's son. He could never hope to come into his own as long as

the life of that boy-king overshadowed his own. Therefore every

pressure must be brought to bear upon the headstrong youth, to defy the

Electoral mandate, to rebuff, to offend the Electoral envoys. Then, the

great German host recalled, Eckhardt relieved of his command, Otto

isolated In a hostile camp, Stephania should cry the watchword for his

doom. The inconsiderable guard remaining would be easily vanquished and

the son of Theophano, utterly abandoned and deserted, should fall an

easy prey to the Senator's schemes, a welcome hostage in the dungeons of

Castel San Angelo, for him to deal with according to the dictates of the

hour. The task to urge Otto to this fatal step had been assigned to

Benilo, but Crescentius was prepared for all emergencies arising from

any unforeseen turn of affairs. He had gone too far to recede. If now

he quailed before the impending issue, the mighty avalanche he had

started would hurl him to swift and certain doom.

Since that fateful hour, when in a moment of unaccountable weakness

Crescentius had listened to Benilo's serpent-wisdom, and had arrayed his

own wife against the German King, the Senator of Rome had seen but

little of Stephania. The preparations for the impending revolt of the

Romans, in whose fickle minds his emissaries found a fertile soil for

the seed of treason and discontent, engaged him night and day. He

seemed present at once on the ramparts, in the galleries and in the

vaults of his formidable keep. But when chance for a fleeting moment

brought the Senator face to face with his consort, the meaning-fraught

smile on the lips of Stephania seemed to assure him that everything was

going well. Otto was lost to the world. Heaven and earth seemed alike

blotted out for him in her presence. Together they continued to stroll

among the ruins, while Stephania poured strange tales into the youth's

ear, tales which crept to his brain, like the songs of the Sirens that

lure the mariner among the crimson flowers of their abode. And Eckhardt

despised the Romans too heartily to fear them, and even therein he

revealed the heel of Achilles.

If the present day was gained, the Senator's diplomacy would carry

victory from the field, and Benilo had well plied his subtle arts. Yet

Crescentius was resolved to attend in person the audience of the envoys.

He would with his own ears hear the King's reply to the Electors. If

Benilo had played him false? He hardly knew why a lingering suspicion

of the Chamberlain crept into his mind at all. But he shook himself

free of the thought, which had for a moment clouded the future with its

sombre shadow.

As the Senator of Rome hurriedly traversed the galleries of the vast

mausoleum, he suddenly found himself face to face with Stephania.

Her face was pale and her eyes revealed traces of tears.

At the first words she uttered, Crescentius paused, surprise and

gladness in his eyes.

"We are well met, my lord," she said, after a brief greeting, an

unwonted tremor vibrating in her tones. "I have sought you in vain all

the morning. Release me from the task you have imposed upon me! I

cannot go on! I am not further equal to it. It is a game unworthy of

you or me!"

The surprise at her words for a moment choked the Senator's utterance

and almost struck him dumb.

"Imposed upon?" he replied. "I thought you had accepted the mission

freely. Is the boy rebellious?"

"On the contrary! Were he so, perhaps I should not now prefer this

request. He is but too pliant."

"He has made your task an easy one," Crescentius nodded meaningly.

"He has laid his whole soul bare to me; not a thought therein, ever so

remote, which I have not sounded. I can not stand before him. My brow

is crimsoned with the flush of shame. He gave me truth for a

lie,--friendship for deceit. He deserves a better fate than the Senator

of Rome has decreed for him."

Crescentius breathed hard.

"The weakness does you honour," he replied after a pause. "Perchance I

should have spared you the task. I placed him in your hands, because I

dared trust no one else. And now it is too late--too late!"

"It is not too late," replied Stephania.

Crescentius pointed silently to the ramparts, where a score of men were

placing a huge catapult in position.

"It is not too late!" she repeated, her cheeks alternately flushing and

paling. "To-day, my lord informed me, the King stands at the Rubicon.

To-day he must choose, If it is to be Rome, if Aix-la-Chapelle. If he

elects to return to the gray gloom of his northern skies, to the sombre

twilight of his northern forests, let him go, my lord,--let him go!

Much misery will be thereby averted,--much heart-rending despair!"

Crescentius had listened in silence to Stephania's pleading. There was a

brief pause, during which only his heavy breathing was heard.

"His choice is made," he replied at last in a firm tone.

"I do not understand you, my lord!"

The Senator regarded his wife with singularly fixed intentness.

"The toils of the Siren Rome are too firm to be snapped asunder like a

spider's web."

She covered her face with her hands. Her breath came and went with

quick, convulsive gasps.

"It is shameful--shameful--" she sobbed. "Had I never lent myself to

the unworthy task! How could you conceive it, my lord, how could you?

But it was not your counsel! May his right hand wither, who whispered

the thought into your ear!"

Crescentius winced. He felt ill at ease.

"Is it so hard to play the confessor to yonder wingless cherub?" he said

with a forced smile.

Stephania straightened herself to her full height.

"When I undertook the shameless task, I believed the son of Theophano a

tyrant, an oppressor, his hands stained with the best of Roman blood!

Such your lying Roman chroniclers had painted him. I gloried in the

thought, to humble a barbarian, whose vain-glorious, boastful insolence

meditated new outrages upon us Romans. Yet his is a purer, a loftier

spirit, than is to be found in all this Rome of yours! Were it not

nobler to acknowledge him your liege, than to destroy him by woman's

wiles and smiles?"

"I cannot answer you on these points," Crescentius spoke after a pause,

during which the olive tints of his countenance had faded to ashen hues.

"I regard those dreams, whose mock-halo has blinded you, in a different

light. It is the wise man who rules the state,--it is the dreamer who

dashes it to atoms. We have gone too far! I could not release

you,--even if I would!"

Stephania breathed hard. Her hands were tightly clasped.

"It can bring glory to neither you, nor Rome," she said in a pleading

voice. "Let him depart in peace, my lord, and I will thank you to my

dying hour!"

"How know you he wishes to depart?"

"How know you he wishes to remain?"

"His destiny is Rome. Here he will live--and here he will die!" the

Senator spoke with slow emphasis. "But we have not yet agreed upon the

signal," he continued with cold and merciless voice. "After the

departure of the envoys you will lead the King into his favourite

haunts, the labyrinth of the Minotaurus, to the little temple of

Neptune. There I will in person await him. When you see the gleam of

spearpoints in the thickets, you will wave your kerchief with the cry:

'For Rome and Crescentius.' No harm shall befall the youth,--unless he

resist. He shall have honourable conduct to the guest chamber, prepared

for him,--below."

And Crescentius pointed downward with the thumb of his right hand.

Stephania's bosom rose and fell in quick respiration.

"I am not accustomed to prefer a request and be denied," she said

proudly, her face the pallor of death. "Is this your last word, my

lord?"

Crescentius met her gaze unflinchingly.

"It is my last," he replied. "Yet one choice remains with you: You may

betray the King,--or the Senator of Rome!"

He turned to go, but something whispered to him to stay. At that moment

he despised himself for having imposed upon his wife a task, against

which Stephania's loftier nature had rebelled and he inwardly cursed the

hour which had ripened the seed and him, who had sown it. Gazing after

Stephania's retreating form, all the love he bore her surged up into his

heart as he cried her name.

Arrested by his voice, Stephania turned and paused for a moment swift as

thought, but in that moment she seemed to read the very depths of his

soul and the utter futility of further entreaty. Without a word she

ascended the spiral stairway leading to the upper galleries and

re-entered her own apartments, while with long and wistful gaze

Crescentius followed the vanishing form of his wife.

And it seemed as if the Senator's prophecy was to be fulfilled. At the

reading of the Electoral manifesto, Otto had been seized with an

uncontrollable fit of rage. He had torn the document to shreds and cast

its fragments at the feet of the Bavarian duke, who acted as spokesman

for his colleagues, the dukes of Thuringia, Saxony and Westphalia.

Neither the arguments of the Electoral envoys, nor the violent

denunciations of Eckhardt, who aired his hatred of Rome in language

never before heard in the presence of a sovereign, could stand before

Benilo's eloquent pleading. On his knees the Chamberlain implored the

King not to abandon Rome and his beloved Romans. Vainly the German

dukes pointed to the dangers besetting the realm, vainly to the

inadequate defences of the Eastern March. With a majesty far above his

years, Otto declared his supreme will to make Rome the capital of the

earth, and to restore the pristine majesty of the Holy Roman Empire.

Rome was his destiny. Here he would live, and here he would die. Rome

was pacified. He required no longer the presence of the army. Let

Bavaria and Saxony defend their own boundaries as best they might; let

the Count Palatine lead his veteran hosts across the Alps. He would

remain. This his reply to the Electors.

On the eve of that eventful day the German dukes departed, while the

Count Palatine proceeded to Tivoli, to prepare the great armament for

their winter march across the Alps. It had come to pass as Crescentius

had predicted. The die was cast. Rome, the Siren, had conquered.

In the night following these events, Rome in her various quarters

presented a strange aspect of secret activity.

In the fortresses of the Cavalli and Caetani lights flitted to and fro

through the gratings in the main court. Benilo, the Chamberlain, might

be seen stealing from the postern gate. Towards the ruins of the

Coliseum men whose dress bespoke them of the lowest rank, were seen

creeping from lanes and alleys. From these ruins at a later hour,

glided again the form of the Grand Chamberlain. Later yet,--when a gray

light is breaking in the east, the gates of Rome, by St. John Lateran,

are open. Benilo is conversing with the Roman guard. The mountains are

dim with a mournful and chilling haze when Benilo enters the palace on

the Aventine.

*CHAPTER X*

*THE TEMPLE OF NEPTUNE*

Shaken to the inmost depths of his soul by a storm of forebodings, hope,

fear and passion, Otto had shaken himself free from the throng of

flattering friends and courtiers and had sought the solitude of his own

chamber. He had dismissed the envoys of the Electors with the

unalterable reply that he would not return to his gloomy Saxon-land.

Let the Saxon dukes defend the borders of the realm, let them keep Poles

and Slavs in check. His own destiny was Rome. Here he would live, and

here he would die. Deeply offended, the German envoys had departed.

The consequences might be far-reaching indeed. Tearing off his

accoutrements and all insignia of office and rank, Otto flung himself on

his couch in solitary seclusion. All had been against him,--save Benilo.

Benilo alone understood him. Benilo alone encouraged the young king to

follow out his destiny. Benilo alone had pointed out that the earth

might be governed from the ancient seat of empire without detriment to

any of the nations of the Holy Roman Empire. Benilo alone had

demonstrated the necessity of Otto's presence in his chosen capital,

whose heterogeneous elements would obey no lesser authority.

Weary and torn by conflicting emotions he at last sank down before the

image of Mary and prayed to the Mother of God to guide his steps in the

dark wilderness in which he found himself entangled. Thus transported

out of himself far beyond the vociferous pageant of that exhausting day,

Otto gave himself with all the mystical fervour of his Hellenic nature

to visions of the future.

Thus the evening approached. Long before the hour appointed he slowly

bent his steps towards the little temple of Neptune, crowning the

olive-clad summits of Mount Aventine and overlooking the vale of Egeria

and the meandering course of the Tiber. The clouds above, beautiful

with changing sunset tints, mottled the broken surface of the river with

hues of bronze and purple between the leaves of the creeping

water-plants, which clogged the movement of the stream. On the

river-bank the rushes were starred with iris and ranunculus.

The sun was declining in the horizon. A solemn stillness, like the

presage of some divine event, held the pulses of the universe. A soft

rose crept into the shimmer of the water, cresting the summits of far

off Soracte. The transient, many-tinted glories of the autumn sunset

were reflected in opalescent lights on the waves of the Tiber, and swept

the landscape in one dazzling glow of gold and amber, strangely blending

with the gold and russet of the autumn foliage. The floating smell of

flowers invisible hovered on the air; a mystic yearning seemed to

pervade all nature in that chill, melancholy odour, that puts men in

mind of death. The soft masses of leaves decayed caused a brushing

sound under the feet of the lonely rambler.

Round him in the silent woods burnt the magnificent obsequies of

departing summer.

Fire-flies moved through the embalmed air, like the torches of unseen

angels. The late roses exhaled their mystic odour, and silently like

dead butterflies, here and there a wan leaf dropped from the branches.

At every step the wood became more lonely. It was as untroubled by any

sound as an abandoned cemetery. Birds there were few, the shade of the

laurel-grove being too dense and no song of theirs was heard. A

grasshopper began his shrill cry, but quickly ceased, as if startled by

its own voice. Insects alone were humming faintly in a last slender ray

of sunlight, but ventured not to quit its beam for the neighbouring

gloom. Sometimes Otto trended his path along wider alleys bordered by

titanic walls of weird cypress, casting dark shade as a moonless night.

Here and there subterranean waters made the moss spongy. Streams ran

everywhere, chill as melted snow, but silently, with no tinkling

ripples, as if muted by the melancholy of the enchanted wood. Moss

stifled the sound of the falling drops and they sank away like the tears

of an unspoken love.

For a moment; Otto lingered among a tangle of elder-bushes. The oblique

sun rays filtering through the dense laurel became almost lunar, as if

seen through the smoke of a funeral torch.

Along the edge of the road goats were contentedly browsing and a rugged

sun-burnt little lad with large black eyes was driving a flock of geese.

Storm clouds lined with gold were rising in the North over the unseen

Alps, and high up in the clear sky there burned a single star.

Deep in thought, Otto passed the walls of the cloisters of St. Cosmas.

Onward he walked as in the memory of a dream.

Through the purple silence came faintly the chant of the monks:

"Fac me plagis vulnerari

Pac me cruce inebriari

Ob amorem Filii."

At last the Ionic marble columns, softly steeped in the warmth of

departing day, came into sight. Silence and coolness encompassed him.

The setting sun still cast his glimmer on the capitals of the columns

whose fine, illumined scroll work, contrasted with the penumbral shadows

of the interior, seemed soft and bright as tresses of gold.

A hand softly touched Otto's shoulder. A voice whispered:

"If you would know all--come! Come and I will tell you the secret which

never yet I have uttered to mortal man."

In the departing light, veiled by the thick cypresses and pale as the

moon-beams, just as in the Egerian wilderness in the whiteness of

summer-lightnings, she put her face close to his, her face white as

marble, with its scarlet lips, its witch-like eyes.

On they walked in silence, hand in hand.

On they walked along the verge of a precipice, where none have walked

before, resisting the vertigo and the fatal attraction of the abyss. If

they should prove unequal to the strain,--overstep the magic circle?

Stephania was pale and trembled. She smiled,--but the smile troubled

him, he scarce knew why. He tried to think it was the melancholy,

caused by the wild and stormy look of the sunset and the loud cawing of

the hereditary rooks, which seemed to croak an everlasting farewell to

life and hope in the oaks of the convent.

Must he repulse the love that surged up to him in resistless waves?

Must he renounce the near for the far-away, the ideal, whose embodiment

she was, for the commonplace?

Slowly the sun sank to rest in a sea of crimson and gold, a fiery

funeral of foliage and flowers.

A clock boomed from a neighbouring tower. The heavy measured clang

vibrated long through the stillness, quivering In the air, like a

warning knell of fate.

Softly she drew him into the dusk of the pagan temple, drew him down

beside her on one of the scattered fragments of antiquity, a dog-eared

God of black Syenite from Egypt, which had shared the fate of its Latin

equals.

But he could not sit beside--her.

Abruptly he rose; standing before her, the passion of the long fight

surged up in him. Stephania sat motionless, and for a time neither

spoke.

At last Otto broke the silence. His voice was strained as if he were

suffering some great pain.

"I have come!" he said. "I have cut every bridge between present and

past! I am here.--Have you thought of my appeal?"

"Oh, why do you torture me?" she replied half sobbing, "I venture to ask

for a delay, and you arraign me as though I stood at the bar of

judgment."

"It is our day of judgment," he replied. "It is the day when life

confronts us with our own deeds,--when we must answer for them, when we

must justify them. For if we are but triflers, we cannot stand in the

face either of heaven or of hell!"

He bent down and took her hands in his.

"Stephania," he said, "I too have doubted, I too have wavered:--give me

but one word of assurance,--my love for you is a wound which no eternity

can cure."

She broke from him, to hide her weeping.

"Have you thought of the forfeit?" she faltered after a time.

"I would not forego the doom!--You alone are my light in this dark

country of the world. Do not stifle the voice in your heart with

reasons--"

"Reasons! Reasons!" she interrupted. "What does the heart know of

reasons! Mine has long forgotten their pleadings--else, were I here?"

Something in her voice and gesture was like a lightning flash over a

dark landscape. In an instant he saw the pit at his feet.

"What then," he faltered, "is this to lead to?"

"Some one has been with you," she said quickly. "These words were not

yours."

He rallied with a fault smile.

"A pretext for not heeding them."

"Eckhardt has been with you! He has maligned me to you!"

"He has warned me against you!"

She turned very pale.

"And you heeded?"

"I am here, Stephania!"

The subtle perfume clinging to her gown mounted to his brain, choking

back reason and resistance.

"Yet again I ask you, what is this to lead to? I am afraid of the

future as a child of the dark!"

She held his hands tightly clasped.

"Oh!" she sobbed, "why will you torture me? I have borne much for our

love's sake--but to answer you now is to relive it and I lack the

strength."

He held her hands fast, his eyes in hers.

"No, Stephania," he said, "your strength never failed you when there was

call on it, and our whole past calls on it now! Eckhardt tells me that

the Romans hate me,--that they resent the love I bear them--oh, if it

were true!"

Stephania gazed at him with wide astonished eyes.

"Ah! It is this then," she said with a sigh of relief. "A moment's

thought must show you what passions are here at work. You must rise

above such fears. As for us,--no one can judge between us, but

ourselves. Shake off these dread fancies! There lies but one goal

before us. You pointed the way to it once. Surely you would not hold

me back from it now?"

Gently she drew him down by her side. Through the crevices in the roof

glimmered the evening star.

She saw the conflict, which raged within him, the instinct to break away

from her, who could never more be his own. She saw the fear which bound

him to her,--she saw the great love he bore her, and she knew that he

was hers soul and body, her instrument, her toy,--her lover if she so

willed.

He spoke to her of his childhood in the bleak northern forests; of the

black pines of Thuringia, of the snow-drifts, which froze his heart; of

the sad sea horizons brooding infinitely away; of the gloomy abbey of

Merseburg, in the Saxon-land, where the great Emperor Otto, his

grandsire, was sleeping towards the day of resurrection, where under the

abbot's guidance he had first been initiated into the magic of a sunnier

clime. He spoke to her of his Greek mother, the Empress Theophano,

whose great beauty was only rivalled by her own, and of that eventful

night, when he descended into the crypts of Aix-la-Chapelle and opened

the tomb of Charlemagne, then dead almost two hundred years. He told

her how he had fought against this mad, unreasoning love, which had at

first sight of her crept into his heart, urging naught in palliation of

his offence, but like a flagellant laying bare his tortured flesh to a

self-inflicted scourge. He begged her to decide for him, to guide him,

lonely antagonist of destiny--dared he ask for more? She was the wife

of the Senator of Rome.

As he ceased speaking, Otto covered his face with his hands, but

Stephania drew them down and held them firmly in her own. Truly, if it

was victory to accomplish the end, by drawing out a loving, confiding

heart, the victory was with the vanquished. And with the memory of the

compact she had sealed a wondrous pity flashed through the woman's soul,

a mighty longing, to lift the son of the Greek Princess up into joyous

peace! No thought of evil marred her pure desire,--alas! She knew not

at that moment, that even in that pity lay his direst snare, and hers.

The decisive moment was at hand. In the thickets before the temple her

eye discerned the gleam of spear-points. For a moment a violent tremor

passed through her body. She had hardly strength sufficient to maintain

her presence of mind, and her face was pale as that of a corpse.

Would she, a second Delilah, deliver Otto to her countrymen--the Romans?

It was some time ere she felt sufficiently composed to speak. Her throat

was dry and she seemed to choke.

Otto remarked her discomfiture, far from guessing its cause.

"I will fetch you some water," he said, starting up to leave the temple.

Quick as lightning she had arisen, holding him back.

"It is nothing," she whispered nervously. "Do not leave me!"

And he obeyed.

Stephania closed her eyes as if to exclude the sight of the

spear-points.

"Otto," she said softly, after a pause, for the first time calling him

by his name, "I fear there is one great lesson you have never learned."

"And what is this lesson?"

"That, what you are doing for the Romans might also be done for you! Is

there no heart to share your sorrow, to help you bear the pain of

disappointment, which must come to you sooner or later? You told me,

you had never loved before we met--"

He nodded assent.

"Never--Never!"

"Ah! Then you do not know. You seek for light, where the sun can never

shine! Striving for the highest ideals of mankind we can rise from the

black depths of doubt but by one ladder,--that of a woman's love!"

Again the dreadful doubt assailed him.

"If you mean--that,--oh, do not speak of it, Stephania! The wound is

already past healing."

She bent towards him and rested her head upon his shoulders.

"And yet I must,--here--and to you."

"No--no--no!" he muttered helplessly and turned away. The words of

Eckhardt rushed and roared through his memory: "Once you are hers,--no

human power can save you from the abyss."

But Eckhardt hated the Romans as one hates a scorpion, a basilisk.

Stephania relinquished not her victim. He must be hers, body and soul,

ere she shrieked the fatal word.--The warm blood hurtling through her

veins quenched the last pitying spark.

"Ah!" she said with a sigh. "You have never known the tenderness of a

woman's smile,--the touch of a woman's hand,--her soft caress,--the

sound of her voice,--that haunts you everywhere,--waking,--in your

dreams--"

"Stephania!" he gasped, and rose as if to flee from her, but she held

him back.

"You have never known the ear that listens for your footsteps,--the lips

that meet your own in a long, passionate kiss,--the kiss that

thrills--and burns--and maddens--"

"Stephania--in mercy--cease!"

Again he attempted to rise, again she drew him down.

"You are not like other men--Otto! Will you always live so lonely,--so

companionless,--with no one to love you with that lasting love, for

which your whole soul cries out?"

Shivering he raised his arms as if to shut the sight of her from his

dazzled gaze. Again, though fainter, Eckhardt's terrible warning

knocked at the gates of his memory. But her purring voice with its low

melodious roll, wooed his listening heart till the doors of reason

tottered on their hinges. And the end--what would be the end?

"Tell me no more," he gasped, "tell me no more! I cannot listen! I

dare not listen! You will destroy me! You will destroy us both!"

Her lips parted in a smile,--that fateful smile, which caused his soul

to quake. Her fine nostrils quivered, as she bent towards him.

"You cannot?" she said. "You dare not? Will you pass the cup untasted,

the cup that brims with the crimson joy of love? Is there none in all

the world to take you by the hand,--to lead you home?"

With a cry half inarticulate he sprang toward her,--his fierce words

tumbling from delirious lips:

"Yes,--there is one,--there is one,--one who could lift me up till my

soul should sing in heavenly bliss,--one who could bring to me

forgetfulness and peace,--one who could change my state of exalted

loneliness to a delirium of ecstasy,--one who could lead me, wherever

she would--could I but lay my head on her breast,--touch her lips,--call

her mine--"

Stephania stretched out her white, bare arms that made him dizzy. He

stood before her quivering with hands pressed tightly against his

throbbing temples. One moment only.--Half risen from her seat, her eye

on the gleaming spear-points in the thicket, she seemed to crouch

towards him like some beautiful animal, then a half choked out cry broke

from his lips, as their eyes looked hungrily into each others, and they

were clasped in a tight embrace. Stephania's arms encircled Otto's neck

and she pressed her lips on his in a long, fervid kiss, which thrilled

the youth to the marrow of his bone.

At that moment a curtain of matted vines, which divided the vestibule of

the little temple from its inner chambers was half pushed aside by a

massive arm, wrapped with scales of linked mail. Standing behind them,

Crescentius witnessed the embrace and withdrew without a word.

Was Stephania not overacting her part?

He waited for the signal.

No signal came.

Then a terrible revelation burst upon the Senator's mind.

Johannes Crescentius had lost the love of his wife.

After a time the spear-points disappeared.

The Senator of Rome saw his own danger and the forces arrayed against

him. He was no longer dealing with statecraft. The weapon had been

turned. With a smothered outcry of anguish he slowly retraced his

steps.

Neither had seen the silent witness of their embrace.

Silence had ensued in the temple.

Each could feel the tremor in the soul of the other.

After a time Otto stumbled blindly into the open. Stephania remained

alone in rigid silence.

In frozen horror she stared into the dusk.

"The game is finished,--I have won,--oh, God forgive me--God forgive

me!" she moaned. "Otto ... Otto ... Otto ..."

* * * * *

"If you would know all,--come at midnight to the churchyard near Ponte

Sisto," whispered a voice close by his side, as Crescentius staggered

towards the Aelian bridge.

He felt a hand upon his shoulder, turned, and saw, like some ill-omened

ghost in the wintry twilight, a lean pale face staring into his own.

In the darkness, under the dense shadows of the cypress-trees he could

not distinguish the features of his companion, who wore the habit of a

monk.

But when Crescentius turned to reply, he was alone.

"Christ too prayed a human prayer for a miracle: Father, let this cup

pass from me!" he muttered, continuing upon his way.

With eyes on the ground he strode along the narrow walk, skirting the

Tiber, in whose turbid waves no stars were reflected. And scarce

consciously he repeated to himself:

"As like as a man and his own phantom,--his own phantom."

He passed the bridge and entered the mausoleum of the Flavian emperor.

Rapidly he ascended to his own chamber.

The candle was burning low.

Up and down he paced in the endeavour to order his thoughts. But no

order would come into the chaotic confusion of his mind.

What was the dominion of Rome to him now?

What the dominion of the Universe?

What devil in human shape had counselled the act in the seeds of which

slumbered his own destruction?

The flame of the dying candle flickered and grew dim.

Had Stephania returned?

He heard no steps, no sound in her chamber.

At the memory of what he had seen, a groan broke from his lips.

How he hated that boy, who after wresting from him the dominion of the

city, had stolen from him the love of his wife!

Stolen? Had it not been thrust upon him? What mortal could have

resisted the temptation? He would die--thus it was written in the

stars;--but Stephania would weep for him--

On tip-toe the Senator stole to the chamber of his wife. The door stood

ajar. The chamber was empty.

The candle flared up for the last time, lighting up the gloom. Then it

sank down and went out.

Crescentius was alone in the darkness.

*CHAPTER XI*

*THE INCANTATION*

It was near the hour of midnight when a figure, muffled and concealed in

an ample mantle left Castel San Angelo. The guards on duty did not

challenge it and after crossing the Aelian bridge, it traversed the

deserted thoroughfares until it reached the Flaminian way, which it

entered. Avoiding the foot-path near the river, the figure moved

stealthily along the farther side of the road, which, as far as could be

discerned by the glimpses of the moon which occasionally shone forth

from a bank of heavy clouds, was deserted. A few sounds arose from the

banks of the river and there was now and then a splash in the water or a

distant cry betokening some passing craft. Otherwise profound silence

reigned. The low structures and wharfs on the opposite bank could be

but imperfectly discerned, but the moonlight fell clear upon the

mausoleum of Augustus and the adjacent church of St. Eufemia. The same

glimmer also ran like a silver-belt across the stream and revealed the

gloomy walls of the Septizonium. The world of habitations beyond this

melancholy stronghold was buried in darkness.

After crossing Ponte Sisto the muffled rambler entered a churchyard,

which seemed to have been abandoned for ages. The moon was now shining

brightly and silvered the massive square watchtowers, the battlements,

and pinnacles with gorgeous tracery. Crescentius had hardly set foot on

the moss-grown path, when two individuals wrapped in dark, flowing

mantles, whose manner was as mysterious as their appearance, glided

stealthily past him.

They seemed not to have noticed his presence but pursued their way

through the churchyard, creeping beneath the shadow of a wall in the

direction of some low structure, which appeared to be a charnel-house

situated at its north-western extremity. Before this building grew a

black and stunted yew-tree. Arrived at it, they paused to see whether

they were observed. They did not notice the unbidden visitor, who had

concealed himself behind a buttress. One of the two individuals who

seemed bent by great age then unlocked the door of the charnel-house and

brought out a pick-axe and a spade. Then both men proceeded some little

distance from the building and began to shovel out the mould from a

grass-grown grave.

Determined to watch their proceeding, Crescentius crept towards the

yew-tree, behind which he ensconced himself. The bent and decrepit one

of the two meanwhile continued to ply his spade with a vigour that

seemed incomprehensible in one so far stricken in years and of such

infirm appearance. At length he paused, and kneeling within the shallow

grave endeavoured to drag something from it. His assistant, apparently

younger and possessed of greater vigour, knelt to lend his aid. After

some exertion they drew forth the corpse of a woman which had been

interred without a coffin and apparently in the habiliments worn during

life. Then the two men raised the corpse, and conveyed it to the

charnel-house. After having done so, one of them returned to the grave

for the lantern and, upon returning, entered the building and closed and

fastened the door behind him.