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Majesty: A Novel

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Title: Majesty: A Novel

Author: Louis Couperus

Author of introduction, etc.: Stephen McKenna

Translator: Alexander Teixeira de Mattos


        
Release date: September 20, 2010 [eBook #33779]
                Most recently updated: March 23, 2024

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/33779

Credits: Christine Bell & Marc D'Hooghe


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MAJESTY: A NOVEL ***

MAJESTY

A Novel

by

LOUIS COUPERUS

Newly Translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos

With a Preface by Stephen McKenna







New York
Dodd, Mead and Company
1921




PREFACE


The betting-book in one of London's oldest and most famous clubs
contains a wager, with odds laid at one hundred sovereigns to ten, that
"within five years there will not remain two crowned heads in Europe."
The condition--"in the event of war between Great Britain and
Germany"--was imposed by the date of the wager, for one member was
venturing his hundred to ten at a moment when another was dining with
him to kill time before the British prime minister's ultimatum took
effect: the imperial German government had to deliver its reply before
midnight, by Greenwich time, or eleven o'clock, by Central European
reckoning.

Since the fourth of August, 1914, the King of the Hellenes, the Czar of
Bulgaria, the Emperor-King of Austria-Hungary, the German Kaiser and a
host of smaller princes have abdicated and sought asylum in countries
left neutral by the war; the Czar of All the Russias also abdicated, but
was executed without an opportunity of escape. Thus, though republican
and royalist may protest that the wager was too sanguine or too
pessimistic, the challenger must have taken credit for his prescience,
as three of the great powers and two of the lesser converted, one after
another, their half-divine sovereign into their wholly material scapegoat;
by no great special pleading he might claim that the bet was won in
spirit if not in fact when the morning of Armistice Day shewed monarchy
surviving only in Spain, Italy, Roumania and Greece, in the small
liberal kingdoms of Scandinavia and the Netherlands, in the minute
principality of Monaco, in the crowned republic of Great Britain and
Ireland and in the eternal anachronism of the Ottoman Empire. And the
time-limit of five years had been exceeded by only three months.

In the peaceful period, four times longer, between the publication of
_Majesty_ in 1894 and the outbreak of the Great War, historians were
kept hardly less busy with their record of fallen monarchs and
extinguished dynasties: King Humbert of Italy was assassinated in 1900;
King Alexander of Servia, with his queen, in 1903; King Carlos of
Portugal, with the heir-apparent, in 1908; and the Sultan Abdul Hamid
was deposed and imprisoned in 1909. Before the year 1894 no ruler of
note had removed himself or been removed since the assassination of the
Czar Alexander II in 1881; this study of "majesty" in its strength and,
still more, in its weakness was published at a time when even the
autocrat was more secure on his throne than at any period since "the
year of revolution," 1848.

If _Majesty_ is to be regarded as a _roman à clef_, there is a
temptation, after six and twenty years, to call Couperus 'prophetic:' to
call him that and nothing else is to turn blind eyes to the intuitive
understanding which is more precious than divination, to ignore, in one
book, the insight which illumines all and to overlook the quality which,
among all the chronicles of kings, penetrates beyond romance and makes
of _Majesty_ an essay in human psychology. So long as the fairy-tales of
childhood are woven about handsome princes and the fair-haired daughters
of kings, there is no danger that the setting of royalty will ever lose
its glamour; so long as "romantic" means primarily that which is
"strange," the writer of romance may bind his spell on all to whom
kings' houses and queens' gardens are an unfamiliar world; so long as
the picturesque and traditional hold sway, the sanction and titles of
kingship, the dignities and the procedure, the inhibitions and aloofness
of royalty will fascinate, whether they like it or not, all those in
whose veins there is no "golden drop" of blood royal. A romance of
kingship, alike in the hands of dramatist, melodramatist and sycophant,
is certain of commercial success.

The strength of this temptation is to be measured by the number of
novels written round the triumphs and intrigues of kings, their amours
and tragedies, their conflicts and disasters: King Cophetua and "King
Sun," Prince Hal and Richard the Second, Louis the Eleventh and Charles
the First, a king in hiding, a king in exile, a king in disguise; so
long as he is a king, he is a safe investment for the romantic writer.
But the weakness of those who succumb to this temptation is to be
measured by their failure to make kings live in literature. Those few
who survive beyond the brief term of ephemeral popularity survive more
by reason of their office than of themselves and Jan de Witt makes
little show beside Louis the Sixteenth; their robes are of so much
greater account than their persons that the feeblest German prince cuts
a more imposing figure than the strongest president of the Swiss
Confederation.

Those who stand out in despite of their romantic setting, the human,
perplexed Hamlets and vacillating, remorseful Richards, are inevitably
few; and few they are likely to remain so long as the frame outshines
the picture and the prince is labelled and left a celestial being apart,
or labelled and dragged into passing sentimental contrast with men less
exalted; it would seem that to regard a king first as a man and
afterwards as an hereditary office-holder was to waste his romantic
possibilities. This, nevertheless, is what Couperus has set himself to
do in _Majesty_; he presents his family of kings as a branch of the
human family; their dignity ceases to be stupefying when all are equally
high-born; they wear their uniforms and robes as other men wear the
conventional clothes of their trade; and, stripping them of their titles
and decorations, he paints his group of men and women who have been born
to rule, as others are born to till the soil; to marry for love or
reasons of state, as others marry for love or reasons of convenience; to
experience such emotions as are common to all men and to face the
special duties and dangers apportioned to their caste by the
organization of society:

_"... The Gothlandic family,"_ says Couperus, _"... lived [at
Altseeborgen] for four months, without palace-etiquette, in the greatest
simplicity. They formed a numerous family and there were always many
visitors. The king attended to state affairs in homely fashion at the
castle. His grandchildren would run into his room while he was
discussing important business with the prime minister.... He just patted
their flaxen curls and sent them away to play, with a caress.... From
all the courts of Europe, which were as one great family, different
members came from time to time to stay, bringing with them the
irrespective nuances of different nationality, something exotic in
accent and moral ideas, so far as this was not merged in their
cosmopolitanism."_

To this "one great family" the organization of society apportioned with
one hand special privileges and exemptions, with the other special
hardships and dangers. Revolution, to these professional rulers, was
what successful trade rivalry is to a store-keeper; assassination was a
daily risk to which store-keepers are commonly not exposed:

_"... Such is the life of rulers: the emperor lay dead, killed by a
simple pistol-shot; and the court chamberlain was very busy, the masters
of ceremonies unable to agree; the pomp of an imperial funeral was
prepared in all its intricacy; through all Europe sped the after-shudder
of fright; every newspaper was filled with telegrams and long
articles...._

_"All this was because of one shot from a fanatic, a martyr for the
people's rights._

_"The Empress Elizabeth stared with wide-open eyes at the fate that had
overtaken her. Not thus had she ever pictured to herself that it would
come, thus, so rudely, in the midst of that festivity and in the
presence of their royal guest...."_

It is to be understood, none the less, that she had always expected it
to come: assassination is one of the special risks attaching to majesty
at all times when one form of kingship or the whole institution of kings
is debated and criticized. _"When the intellectual developments or
culture of a race,"_ wrote Heine, in _The Citizen Kingdom in 1832,
"cease to accord with its old established institutions, the necessary
result is a combat in which the latter are overthrown. This is called a
revolution. Until this revolution is complete, so long as the reform of
these institutions does not agree at all points with the intellectual
development, the habits and the wants of the people, during this period
the national malady is not wholly cured and the ailing and agitated
people will often relapse into the weakness of exhaustion and at times
be subject to fits of burning fever. When this fever is upon them, they
tear the lightest bandages and the most healing lint from their old
wounds, throw the most benevolent and noble-hearted nurses out of window
and themselves roll about in agony, until at length they find themselves
in circumstances or adapt themselves to institutions that suit them
better."_

So much for the race, in the gripe of growing-pains; but what of the
nurses? How little benevolent or noble-hearted soever they be, nurses
are bound by the honour of their profession and by personal pride not to
forsake their patients. In one passage of _Majesty_ the crown-prince is
shaken by fundamental doubts of his own inherited right to rule; he
questions and analyses until he is brought to heel by his imperial
father who remembers that an excess of "victorious analysis" rotted the
intellectual foundations of the old order and prepared the way for the
logical French revolution. In another passage the boy realizes without
any qualification that he at least is unfitted for the burthen of empire
and that it is better to abdicate in favour of his brother or to commit
suicide than to play Atlas with a world that he cannot sustain; once
more, his imperial father silences any admission that his own flesh and
blood can be too degenerate for the task of majesty. And so, at the
moral sword-point, this hereditary nurse is held to the duty and
privilege of standing by an hereditary patient whom he cannot relieve
with "the most healing lint" and who may at any moment throw him out of
window.

Not even in thought may majesty abdicate: a prince inherits his
philosophy as he inherits his title.

_"Life is so simple,"_ proclaims the collectivist Zanti.

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

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

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

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

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

The dead weight of inheritance, always a psychological fascination for
Couperus, becomes doubly fascinating when one generation after another
inherits an undwindling legacy of divine, ironic whim. As, in _The Books
of the Small Souls_ and in _Old People and the Things that Pass_, the
children and grandchildren are born with minds tainted by prenatal
memories, so, in _Majesty_, a prenatal influence has ordered the life
and determined the fate of an infant who first draws breath as Count of
Lycilia, eldest son of the Duke of Xara, himself crown-prince and eldest
son of the Emperor of Liparia. There is no escape, no lack of heirs to
the ironic inheritance: _"'If it's a son,'"_ says the empress mother, on
the morrow of her husband's assassination, _"'it will be a Duke of
Xara....'_

_"And then the Emperor of Liparia ... lost his self-restraint. In one
lightning-flash, one zig-zag of terror, he saw again his life as
crown-prince, he thought of his unborn son. What would become of this
child of fate? Would it be a repetition of himself, of his hesitation,
his melancholy and his despair?..."_

If _Majesty_ be a _roman à clef_, "this child of fate," with his father
and mother and sisters, had his short spell of hesitation, melancholy
and despair ended in 1918 by the revolver-shots of his gaolers. If
Othomar be not a portrait of the Czar Nicolas II., it is hard to believe
that the character was not suggested by him; though the Czar Alexander
III. died a natural death, he would seem to have supplied a parallel for
the Emperor Oscar, as Alexander II. supplied one for the liberal
emperor, Othomar XI. The fanatical Zanti has his model in Count Tolstoi;
and even the tragic romance of Prince von Lohe-Obkowitz has its
historical counterpart.

But the interest and value of the book do not lie in any fancied
resemblance, among the characters, to living or dead kings; the study of
Prince Othomar does not depend on any likeness to the Czar Nicolas II.;
Couperus succeeds or fails not as a court painter, but as a great
sympathetic and imaginative artist who does or does not create, in the
unfamiliar atmosphere of a court, first the collective life and spirit
of a caste long trained to formalize its life and suppress its emotions,
then a group of human characters who stand out compelling and vital
against the posturing, shadowy kings and queens of romance.

To the composition of _Majesty_ go the understanding and the historic
sense, the irony and tenderness that enable Couperus in later books to
draw with unfaltering touch his exquisite portraits of old age and
youth, of men and women, in their moments of solitude and in their
reactions upon one another. Few men have stepped so lightly and surely
across the confines of the centuries and the continents; his intuition
makes him equally at home in Alexandria and the Hague, with women and
men, in the second century and in the twentieth; and it is not benumbed
by the surface inhumanity of a court. When the Archduchess Valérie had
lost her lover, the crown-prince could not understand her being able to
talk as usual at dinner.

_"It irritated him, his want of penetration of the human heart: how
could he develop it? A future ruler ought to be able to see things at a
single glance.... And suddenly, perhaps merely because of his desire for
human knowledge, the thought arose within him that she was concealing
her emotions, that perhaps she was still suffering intensely, but that
she was pretending and bearing up: was she not a princess of the blood?
They all learnt that, they of the blood, to pretend, to bear up! It was
bred in their bones."_

Perhaps it was bred in his bones, perhaps it was his mere desire for
human knowledge that gave Couperus his penetration into the emotions
which they of the blood were taught to conceal. In none of his books has
he lavished more sympathy than in his painting of Prince Othomar's
vacillation and passionate good-will, his timidity and desperate
courage; nowhere has he used greater tenderness than in his sketch of
the chivalry and gratitude which did duty for love in the passionless
union of Valérie and the crown-prince.

                                                     STEPHEN MCKENNA.

LINCOLN'S INN, LONDON, 7 _October_, 1920.




TRANSLATOR'S NOTE


My first translation of _Majesty_ was written in collaboration with my
dear friend Ernest Dowson and published in the year 1895. A small
edition was sold by the London publisher to Messrs. D. Appleton &
Company and has long been out of print. Messrs. Appleton, with
characteristic generosity, have relinquished to the present publishers
any copyright which they had established in the book and have thus
enabled me to produce this new version. For even a translator's style
undergoes notable modifications in a quarter of a century; and I should
not have been satisfied to see this novel reissued in its earlier
English form. The story should not therefore be regarded as a mere
reprint.

Incidentally, when collating the old Teixeira-Dowson version with the
original, I was struck with the chaste and discreet appearance of the
Dutch as compared with the English edition, soiled as the latter was on
every page with a splash of capital letters. Is it some innate snobbery
or merely lack of intelligence or thought that induces English
writers--and for long myself among them--to dab a capital at the head of
such nouns as the "emperor," the "crown-prince," the "duke," the
"chancellor," "empire" and "state," nay, even the "major," the
"professor," the "doctor," or of such adjectives as "royal" and
"imperial"? If we are to write of the "Major" and the "Professor," why
not be still more lavish with our capitals and write of the
"Midshipman," the "Postmistress" and the "Postman"? Anyhow, I felt that
a suitable time had come to experiment with an innovation and I decided
to reduce my capital letters to a minimum and to affix them to titles
only when these were followed by the name. Even the Germans do not
distinguish their titles with capitals; they have the more logical habit
of beginning every substantive with a capital; and, in their murky
language, this habit has one advantage, that it assists the reader to
hunt the elusive verbs to their lair. The English have not this reason
nor this excuse.

My thanks are due not only to Messrs. Appleton but also to Mr. Stephen
McKenna, the most acceptable of our younger novelists, who in his
admiration for the elder craftsman, has volunteered to write a preface
to Louis Couperus' present masterpiece.

                                         ALEXANDER TEIXEIRA DE MATTOS.

VENTNOR, I.W., 1 _November_, 1920.




MAJESTY




CHAPTER I



1

Lipara, usually a city white as marble: long, white rows of villas on a
southern blue sea; endless, elegant esplanades on the front, with palms
whose green lacquer shimmered against an atmosphere of vivid blue ether.
But to-day there drifted above it, heavily, a sombre, grey sky, fraught
with storm and tragedy, like a leviathan in the firmament. And this grey
sky was full of mystery, full of destiny, of strange destiny: it
precipitated no thunder, but remained hanging over the city, merely
casting faint shadows over the brightness of its palaces, over the width
of its squares and streets, over the blue of its sea, its harbour, where
the ships, upright, still, anxious, raised their tall masts on high.

White, square, massive, amid the verdure of the Elizabeth Parks, in the
more intimate mystery of its own great plane-trees--the celebrated
plane-trees of Lipara, world-famed trees--stood the Imperial, the
emperor's palace, quasi-Moorish, with white, pointed arcades: it stood
as the civic crown of the capital, one great architectural jewel,
separated from the city, though standing in its very midst, by all that
park-like verdure.

The empress, Elizabeth of Liparia, sat in the private drawing-room of
her apartments in the right wing; she sat with a lady-in-waiting, the
Countess Hélène of Thesbia. The windows were open; they opened on the
park; the famous plane-trees rose there, knotty with age,
wide-spreading, anxious, motionless with their trimmed leaves, between
which a dull-green twilight shimmered upon the lawns which ran into the
distance, rolling softly and smoothly, like tight-stretched velvet, into
an endless violet vista, with just here or there the one strident white
patch of a statue.

A great silence buzzed its strange sound of stillness indoors from the
park; it buzzed around the empress. She sat smiling; she listened to
Hélène reading aloud; she tried to listen, she did not always
understand. A nervous dread haunted her, surrounded her, as with an
invisible net of meshes, unbreakable. This dread was for her husband,
her children, her elder son, her daughters, her younger boy. This dread
crept along the carpet beneath her feet; it hung from the ceiling above
her head, stole round about her through the whole room. This dread was
in the park: it came from afar, from the violet vistas; it swept over
the lawns and climbed in through the open windows; it fell from the
trees, it fell from the sky, the grey, thunder-laden sky. This dread
trembled through Liparia, through the whole of Liparia, through the
whole empire; it trembled in, in to the empress, enveloping her whole
being....

Then Elizabeth drew a deep breath and smiled. Hélène had looked up to
her at a certain sentence with a light stress of voice and eyes,
pointing the dialogue of the novel; this made the empress smile and she
listened afresh. The anxiety smouldered in her, but she extinguished it
with abounding acquiescence, acquiescence in what was to happen, in what
must happen.

The novel which Hélène was reading was _Daniële Cortis_, a work that was
in vogue at court because the Princess Thera had liked it. The countess
read carefully and with great expression; the rhythm of the Italian came
from her lips with the elegance of very pointed Venetian glass, flowery
and transparent. And the empress wondered that Hélène could read so
beautifully and that she did not seem to feel the anxiety which
nevertheless stole about everywhere, like a spectre.

There was a knock at the door leading from the anteroom; a flunkey
opened the door; a lady-in-waiting appeared between the hangings and
curtseyed:

"His highness Prince Herman," she announced in a voice that hesitated a
little, as though she knew that this hour of the afternoon was almost
sacred to the empress.

"Ask the prince to come in," replied the empress: her voice, with all
its haughtiness, sounded kind and attractive and sympathetic. "We have
been expecting the prince so long...."

The door remained open, the lady-in-waiting disappeared, the flunkey
waited at the hangings, motionless, for the prince to come. His firm
tread sounded, approaching quickly, through the anteroom; and he made a
pleasant entrance, with friendliness in his healthy, red face and the
joy of meeting in his large grey eyes, with their gleaming black pupils.
The flunkey closed the door behind him.

"Aunt!"

The prince stepped towards the empress with both hands outstretched. She
had risen, as had Hélène, and she moved a step towards him; she took his
two hands and allowed him to kiss her heartily on both cheeks.

Hélène curtseyed.

"Countess of Thesbia," said the prince, bowing.

"So you have come at last!" said the empress, with jesting discontent.
She shook her head, but could not but look kindly at his pleasant,
handsome, healthy face. "Why did you not telegraph for certain when you
were coming? Then Othomar would have gone to the station, but now...."

She shrugged her shoulders with a smile of regret, as much as to say
that now it could not be helped that his reception had only been _tel
quel_....

"But, aunt," said Herman--the tone of his voice implied that he would
never have demanded this of Othomar--"I have been excellently received:
General Ducardi, Leoni, Fasti, our worthy minister and Siridsen...."

"Othomar will be sorry all the same," said the empress. "He is out
driving now with Thera. Thera is driving her new bays. I can't
understand why they went; it is sure to rain!"

The empress resumed her seat, with an anxious look at the weather
outside; the prince and Hélène likewise sat down. A cross-fire of
enquiries after the two families was kindled between the empress and her
nephew; they had not seen each other for months. There was much to be
discussed; the times were full of disaster; and the empress showed a
long telegram which the emperor had sent from Altara about the
inundations. Her fingers shook as they held the message.

She was still a woman of remarkable beauty, in spite of her grown-up
children. But the charm of her beauty was apparent to very few. In
public that beauty acquired a hardness as of a cameo: fine, clear-cut
lines; great, cold, brown eyes, without expression; a cold, closed
mouth; before people her slender figure assumed something stiff and
automatic; she even showed herself thus before the more intimate circles
of the court. But when she was seen, as now, in the seclusion of her own
drawing-room, with no one except her nephew, whom she loved almost as
much as her own children, and one little lady-in-waiting whom she
spoilt, then, in spite of the dread which she repressed deep down in her
heart, she became another woman. In her simple grey silk--she was in
slight mourning for a relation--what was stiff and automatic in her
figure changed into a gracious suppleness of carriage and movement, as
spontaneous as the other was studied; the cameo of her face became
animated; a look almost of melancholy came into her eyes; and, above
all, a laugh about that cold, hard mouth was as a gleam of sympathy that
rendered her unrecognizable to one who had seen her for the first time
cold, stiff and austere.

Prince Herman of Gothland was the second son of her sister, the Queen of
Gothland. A tall, sturdy lad in his undress uniform as a naval
lieutenant, with the healthy, Teutonic fairness of the house of
Gothland: a firm neck, broad shoulders, the swelling chest of an
athlete, the determined quickness of movement of a lively nature, more
than sufficient intelligence in his large grey eyes with the black
pupils and with now and then a single pleasant, soft note in his
baritone voice, a note that caused a momentary slight surprise and
rendered him attractive when it sounded gently in the midst of his
virility. And now that he sat there, easily, simply, pleasantly and yet
with a certain dignity that did not permit him an absolute excess of
joviality; now that he spoke, with his sweet voice, of his father, his
mother, his brothers and sisters and asked after his uncle, the Emperor
Oscar of Liparia, asked after Othomar, Thera: now, yes, now he aroused
in the empress a delicate feeling of family affection, something of a
secret bond of blood, a very solid support of relationship amid the
isolation of their respective grandeurs, the grandeurs of Liparia and
Gothland. Yonder, at the other side of Europe, far, far away from her
and yet so near through the magnetism of this delicate feeling, she felt
Gothland lying as one vast plain of love, whither she could allow her
thoughts to wander. She was no longer giddy with melancholy and dread in
that she was so high together with those whom she loved, her husband and
her children, for she was not high alone: in her highness she leant
against another highness, Liparia against Gothland, Gothland against
Liparia. It brought moist tears to her eyes, it brought a melancholy
that was like happiness clinging to her breath. The spectre of dread had
disappeared. She could have embraced her nephew; she would have liked to
tell him all this: his mere presence gave her this feeling, a feeling of
comfort and of strength; she had not known it for months.



2

The door was opened; the flunkey stood stiff and upright, with a fixed
look that stared straight before him, in the shadow of the hangings.
Princess Thera and Othomar entered. The princess went up gaily and
kindly to her cousin, they kissed; Othomar also embraced Herman, with a
single word. But, in comparison with the natural utterances of the
empress and of Thera, this single word of the Duke of Xara sounded
studied and smilingly cold, not intimate, and carried a needless air of
etiquette. It failed to conceal a translucent insincerity, a transparent
show that made no effort to simulate affection, but seemed quite simply
what at this moment it could not but seem, a greeting of feigned
kindness between two cousins of the same age. Prince Herman was
accustomed to this: there was no intimacy between him and Othomar; and
this was the more striking when they saw each other for the first time
after several months; it affected the empress keenly, disagreeably.

The conversation again turned upon the inundations in the north. The
empress showed her children the latest telegram, the same that she had
shown to Herman; it mentioned fresh disasters: still more villages swept
away, towns harassed by the swollen and overflowing rivers, after a
month of rain that had resembled the Flood. It had caused the emperor to
proceed three days ago to the northern provinces; but they at court were
now every moment expecting his orders that the crown-prince should
replace him there, as he himself was returning to Lipara because of the
cabinet crisis.

The crown-prince discussed all this a little coldly and formally. He was
a young man of twenty-one, slender and of short stature, very slightly
built, with delicate, melancholy features and dull, black eyes, that
generally stared straight before him; a young moustache tinted his upper
lip as with a stripe of Indian ink. He had a way of drooping his head a
little on his chest and then looking up from under his eyelids; he
generally sat very quiet; his hands, which were small and broad but
delicate, rested evenly upon his knees; and he had a trick of carrying
his left hand to his eyes and then--he was a little short-sighted--just
peering at his ring. He was tightly girt in the blue-and-white uniform
of a captain in the lancers, the uniform which he generally wore in
public: its silver frogs lent a certain breadth to his slenderness; on
his right wrist he wore a narrow, dull-gold bracelet.

"This is the first letter," said the empress. "Read it out, Thera...."

The princess took the letter. The emperor wrote:

"It is heartrending to see all this and to be able to do so little. The
whole district south of the Zanthos, from Altara to Lycilia, is one
expanse of water; where villages stood there now float the remains of
bridges and houses, trees, accumulations of roofs, dead cattle, carts
and household furniture and, as we were going along the Therezia Dyke,
which--God be praised!--still stands firm at Altara, a cluster of
corpses was slowly washed straight before our feet in one gigantic
embrace of death...."

The crown-prince had suddenly turned pale; he remained sitting in his
usual attitude, peering at his ring, with the trick that was his habit.
Thera read on. When the crown-prince looked up he met his mother's eyes.
She nodded to him with her eyelids, unseen by the others, who were
listening to the letter; he smiled--a smile full of heartbreaking
melancholy--and answered her with the same invisible quiver of the
eyelids; it was as though he understood that gentle greeting and drew a
scrap of comfort from it for a mysterious, silent sorrow that depressed
him within himself, that lay on his breast like an oppression of the
breath, like a nightmare in his waking life.

But Prince Herman was already talking about the ministerial crisis: it
was momentarily expected that the authoritative government, rendered
powerless, since the new elections, in the house of deputies with its
majority of constitutionals, would proffer its resignation to the
emperor. The question, as always, was that of a revision of the
constitution, which the constitutionals desired and the
authoritatives--taking the side of the emperor--opposed. The Empress
Elizabeth heaved a sigh of fatigue: how often had not this question of a
revision of the constitution, which in Liparia always meant an extension
of the constitution and a restriction of the imperial authority, come
looming up during their twenty years' reign as a personal attack upon
her husband! Resembling his long line of Liparian ancestors,
hereditarily autocratic, Oscar could never forgive his father, Othomar
XI., for allowing a constitution to be passed in his more liberal reign.
And now, at this crisis, it was no small thing that they were asking,
the constitutionals. The house of peers, hereditary and authoritative,
the emperor's own body, which cancelled every proposal of a too
constitutional character sent up from the house of deputies, was no
longer to stand above them, hereditary and therefore, because of its
hereditary nature, invariably authoritative: they wanted to make it
elective! Even Othomar XI., with his modern ideas in favour of a
constitution, would never have suffered this attack upon one of the most
ancient institutions of the empire, an attack which would shake Liparia
to its foundations....

While Herman was debating this, casually, his words lightly touching
this all-important question, it seemed to Othomar as though he were
turning giddy. A world passed through his head, rushing with rapid
clouds through his imagination; and out of these clouds visions loomed
up before him, pale-red, quick as lightning, terrible as a kind of
apocalypse, the universe ending in a dynamite explosion. Out of these
clouds there flashed up for an instant a scene, a recollection of the
history of his imperial inheritance: an emperor of Liparia murdered
centuries ago by one of his favourites at a court festival. Revolutions
in other countries of Europe, the French revolution, flickered up with a
blood-red reflection; the strikes in the quick-silver mines of the
eastern provinces grinned at him out of them, out of the clouds, the
world of clouds storming through his thoughts.... And so many more, so
many more, all so rapid, with the rapidity of their lightning-flashes;
he could not grasp them, the ruddy lightning-flashes; it all just
flickered through him and then away: it flickered away, far away!... And
it seemed strange to him that he was sitting there, in his mother's
drawing-room, with the stately park swarming behind the plate-glass
windows, with tints of old, medieval gold-leather, now, in the lowered
gleam of the sun-rays; with his mother opposite him, so sweet, so
daintily gentle in the intimacy of this short, uninterrupted meeting:
his cousin talking and his sister replying and the little
lady-in-waiting listening with a smile.... How strange to sit like this,
so easily, so peacefully, so serenely, in the seclusion of their palace,
as though Liparia were not shaking like an old, crazy tower!... Yes,
they were talking about the crisis, Herman and Thera, but what did
talking amount to? Words, nothing but words! Why this endless stringing
together of words, beautiful, empty words, which a sovereign is obliged
to string together and then utter to his subjects, now on this occasion,
now on that? No, no, they were not in his province, speeches! For what,
after all, were they supposed to express, this or that? What was right,
what was just, what was right and just for their empire, this or that?
How could one know, how could one be certain, how could one avoid
hesitating, seeking, groping, blind-folded? Even if he had a thousand
eyes all over the empire, would he be able to see everything that might
happen? And, if he were omniscient, would he always be able to know what
would be right? The constitution: was it good for a country to have a
constitution or not? In Russia: was it good in Russia? A republic: would
a republic be better? And who was right? Was his father right in wanting
to reign as an absolute monarch, with his hereditary house of peers, in
which he, Othomar, now recalled his admission, as Duke of Xara, at his
eighteenth year, with the ducal crown and the robes and chain of the
order of the Imperial Orb? Or was the house of deputies right? Would it
be a good thing to place a restriction upon absolute sovereignty? It was
difficult to decide.... The inundations: "It is heartrending to see all
this and to be able to do so little.... An expanse of water all the way
to Lycilia, a cluster of corpses in the embrace of death...."

It lightened.

Dull, heavy rumblings rolled through the sky; thick drops fell hard as
liquid hail upon the leaves of the plane-trees; the whole park seemed to
shiver, dreading the threatening cloud-burst. Hélène rose and closed the
open window.

Then Othomar heard a strange sound: Syria.... Had they ceased talking of
the house of peers? Syria, Syria....

"The king and queen were to have come next week, but they have now
postponed their visit," said the empress.

"Because of the inundations," added Thera. "They are going to
Constantinople first. I only wish they would remain with the sultan...."

"This visit seems to me at least to be something of an infliction," said
Herman, laughing. "And how long do they stay, aunt?"

The empress raised her shoulders to say that she did not know: the
approaching visit of the King and Queen of Syria pleased neither her nor
the emperor, but it was not to be avoided.... However, not wishing to
say much on this subject before Hélène, she replied:

"All the court festivities are now postponed, as you know, Herman,
because of these terrible disasters. You will have a quiet time, my boy.
You had better go with Othomar to Count Myxila's this evening...."

Count Myxila, the imperial chancellor, was that day keeping his sixtieth
birthday. He was the emperor's principal favourite. That morning he had
been to the empress to receive her congratulations. The crown-prince
was, by the emperor's desire, to appear for a moment at the reception in
the chancellor's palace.

Prince Herman glanced at Othomar enquiringly, as though expecting a word
from him too.

"Of course," the Duke of Zara hastened to say. "Myxila will reckon on
seeing Herman...."



3

When, at half-past ten in the evening, Othomar and Herman returned from
the chancellor's palace in a downpour of rain, it was known among the
empress' entourage also that the government had resigned; the princes
had met the ministers at Count Myxila's; the crisis had thrilled through
the outward ceremonial of the reception like a threatening shudder of
fever. Also there was a telegram from the emperor for the Duke of Xara:

"I wish your imperial highness to proceed to Altara to-morrow.

                                                          "OSCAR."

The telegram did not come as a surprise, but was the natural
consequence of the resignation of the government and of the emperor's
return, for the emperor did not wish to leave the scene of the disasters
without the consolation that the heir-apparent was about to replace him.

After a moment spent with the empress, Othomar withdrew to his own
apartments. He sent for his equerry, Prince Dutri, and consulted with
him shortly and in a few words, after which the equerry hurried away
with much ado. In his dressing-room Othomar found his valet, Andro, who
had been warned by one of the chamberlains and was already busily
packing up.

"Don't pack too much," he said, as the valet rose respectfully from the
trunk before which he was kneeling. "It would only be in the way...."

So soon as he had said this, he failed to see the reason. Nor did the
valet seem to take any notice of it: kneeling down again before the
trunk, he continued to pack what he thought fit. It would be quite right
as Andro was doing it, thought Othomar.

And he flung himself into a chair in his study. One of the windows was
open; a single standard lamp in a corner gave a dim light. The furious
downpour raged outside; a humid whiff of wet leaves drifted indoors.

The prince was tired, too tired to summon Andro to pull off his tight
patent-leather boots. He was wearing the white-and-gold uniform of a
colonel of the throne-guards, the imperial body-guard; the chain of the
order of the Imperial Orb hung round his neck; other decorations studded
his breast. The reception at the imperial chancellor's still whirled
before his eyes; in his brain buzzed, mingling with the rain, the
inevitable conversations about the crisis, the government, the house of
peers. He saw himself the crown-prince, always the crown-prince, always
too condescending, too affable, not sufficiently natural, not simple,
not easy like Herman; and he saw Herman moving easily through the rooms
of the chancellor's palace, asking quite simply to be introduced to the
ladies, now by Count Myxila and again by an equerry. And he envied his
cousin, who was a second son. Herman did not cause the atmosphere around
him to freeze at once, as did he, with the cold imperial look of his
crown-princedom.

He saw the ministers, the ministers who were about to retire, each with
his own interests at heart instead of those of Liparia. He suspected
this from their humble attitudes before him, the crown-prince, when he
had spoken to all of them.... He felt that they were only playing a
part, that there was much in them that they did not allow to transpire;
and he suddenly asked himself why, why this should all be so, why so
much show, nothing but show.... And he was suffering now, deep in his
breast; the tightness of his uniform, loaded with decorations, oppressed
him....

He saw old Countess Myxila and some other ladies, whom he had seen
curtseying amid the crackling of their trains and the sudden downward
glitter of their diamonds, whom he had seen flushing with pleasure
because the Duke of Xara had taken notice of them. And the wife also of
the court-marshal, the Duchess of Yemena, who had so long been absent
from court in voluntary exile at her estate in Vaza: he saw her
approaching on Prince Dutri's arm. For he did not know her: years ago,
when she was at court, he was a boy of fifteen, undergoing a strict
military education, seldom with the empress and never at the court
festivals; he had never seen the duchess at that time.

Now, in the twilight of that one lamp, with the weather raging outside,
he saw her once more and she became as it were transparent in the lines
of the rain; she looked strange, seen through the rain, as through a
curtain of wet muslin. A tall woman, voluptuously formed, half-naked
under the white radiance of her diamond necklace, that was how she
approached him: her hair blue-black with a gleam in it, her face a
little pale under a thin bloom of rose powder; she came nearer, slowly,
hesitating, in her yellow-gold figured satin, edged with heavy sable;
she bowed before him, with a deep, reverential curtsey before the
imperial presence: her head sank upon her breast, the tiara in her black
hair shot forth rays, her whole stature curved down as with one
serpentine line of grace in the material of gleaming gold that shone
about her bosom and seemed to break over the thick folds of her train
with a filagree of light. He had spoken to her. She rose from the
billows of her reverential grace; she replied, he forgot what; her eyes
sparkled upon his like black stars. She had made an impression upon him.
He thought it was because he had heard her much spoken of as a woman
with a life full of passion, a thing that was a riddle to him. His
education had been military and strictly chaste, his youth had remained
uncorrupted by the easy morals of the court, perhaps because his
parents, after a long and secret separation, known to none but
themselves, had come together again from a need of family-life and
mutual support; the Empress Elizabeth had forgiven the Emperor Oscar and
submitted to his infidelities as inevitable. Round about him Othomar had
never had occasion to observe the life of the senses. At the university
of Altara, where he had studied, he had never taken part, except
officially, in the diversions of the students; he had always remained
the crown-prince, not from haughtiness, but because he was unable to do
otherwise, from lack of ease and tact.

And something in the duchess had made an impression on him, as of a
thing unknown. He felt in this woman, who curtseyed so deeply before him
with her sphinx-like smile, a world of emotion and knowledge which he
did not possess; he had felt poor in comparison with her, small and
insignificant. What was it that she possessed and he not? Was it a
riddle of the soul? Were there such things, soul-enigmas, and was it
worth while to try to fathom them? Such a woman as she, was she not
quite different from his mother and sisters? Or did his equerries, among
themselves, speak of his sisters too as they spoke of the duchess? And
this life of passion, this life of love for so many, was that then the
truth? Did they not slander her, the equerries, or at least did they not
make truth seem different from what it was, as they always did in
everything, as if the truth must always be made to seem other to a
prince than to a subject?

He felt tired. And he sat on, striving in vain to drive from him the
whirl of the strange figures of that reception seen through a
transparency of rain. Before him, as though in his room, they all walked
through one another: the ministers, the equerries, Count Myxila and the
duchess....

A knock, a chamberlain:

"Prince Herman is asking whether he may intrude on your highness for a
minute."

He nodded yes. After a moment Prince Herman entered.

"You are always welcome, Herman," said Othomar; and his voice sounded
cold in spite of himself.

"I have come to ask you something," said Herman of Gothland. "I should
much like to go with you to Altara to-morrow; but I want to be certain
that you don't mind. I would not have asked it of my own accord, if my
aunt hadn't spoken of it. What do you think?"

Othomar looked at Herman; Othomar did not like his cool voice:

"If you do so out of sympathy, because you happen to be at Lipara, by
all means," he began....

"Let me tell you once more: I am doing this chiefly because of ... your
mother."

His voice sounded very emphatic.

"Do it for her then," replied Othomar, gently. "It will give me great
pleasure if you go with me for my mother's sake."

Herman realized that he had been unnecessarily cool and emphatic. He was
sorry. The empress had asked him to accompany Othomar. He had hesitated
at first, knowing that there was a lack of sympathy between Othomar and
him. Then he had yielded, but had not known how to ask Othomar. His
usual ease of manner had forsaken him, as it always did in Othomar's
presence.

"Very well, then," Herman stammered, awkwardly.

Othomar put out his hand:

"I understand your intention perfectly. Mamma would like you to go too,
because she will then be sure that there is some one with me whom I can
trust in everything. Isn't that it?"

Herman pressed his hand:

"Yes," he said, pleased, contented, feeling no annoyance that Othomar
had had the best of the conversation, delighted that his cousin took it
like this. "Yes, just so; that's how it is. Don't let me detain you now:
it's late. Good-night...."

"Good-night...."

Herman went. It was still pouring with rain. Othomar sat down again; the
chill of the rainy night pressed coldly into the room and fell upon his
shoulders. But he remained staring motionlessly at the tips of his
boots.

Andro entered softly:

"Does your highness wish me to...."

Othomar nodded. The valet first closed the window and drew the blind and
then knelt before the prince, who, with a gesture of fatigue, put out
his foot to him and rested the heel of his boot on the man's knee.



4

The downpour ceased during the night; but it was raining again in the
morning. It was seven o'clock; a sultry moisture covered the colossal
glass roof of the station, as though it had been breathed upon from end
to end. The special train stood waiting; the engine gave short, powerful
snorts, like a discontented, tired beast. A great multitude, a buzzing
accumulation of vague people filled the glass hall; a detachment of
infantry--two files, to right and left; the uniforms, dark-red and
pale-grey; above, a faint glitter of bayonets--drew two long stripes of
colour diagonally through the sombre station, cut the crowd into two and
kept a broad space clear in front of the imperial waiting-room.

Dissatisfaction hovered over the crowd; angry glances flashed; rough
words crackled sharply through the air, mingled with curses; a
contemptuous laugh sounded in a corner.

There was a long wait; then a cheer was heard outside: the prince had
arrived in front of the station. The waiting-room became filled with
uniforms, glistening faintly in the morning light; brief sentences were
exchanged in a low voice.

Othomar entered with Herman and the Marquis of Dazzara, the governor of
the capital, the highest military authority, whose rich uniform stood
out against the simpler ones of the others, even against those of the
princes; they were followed by adjutants, Liparian and Gothland
equerries, aides-de-camp. The mayor of the town and the managing
director of the railway stepped towards Othomar and saluted him; the
mayor stumbled through long phrases before the two princes.

"Why wasn't the approach to the platform closed to the public?" asked
General Ducardi of the director, after the adjutant-general had glanced
at the platform through the lace curtains, curious about the humming
outside.

The director shrugged his shoulders:

"That was our first intention; it was done in that way when the emperor
left," he replied. "But a special message was received from the
Imperial, urgently requesting us not to shut off the platform; it was
the Duke of Xara's wish."

"And how about all those soldiers?"

"By command of the governor of the capital. An aide-de-camp came and
told us that a detachment of infantry was coming as a guard-of-honour."

"Was that aide-de-camp also from the Imperial?"

"No, from the governor's palace...."

Ducardi shrugged his shoulders; an angry growl fluttered his great, grey
moustache. He walked straight up to the crown-prince:

"Is your highness aware that there is a detachment of infantry outside?"
he said, interrupting the mayor's long sentences.

The governor heard him and drew nearer.

"A detachment?... No," said Othomar, in astonishment.

"Did your highness not command it, then?" Ducardi continued.

"I? No," Othomar repeated.

The governor bowed low; the general's loud, gruff voice unnerved him.

"I thought," said the governor, urbanely, but mumbling, stammering--and
he tried to be at once humble before the prince and haughty towards the
general--"I thought it would be well to safeguard your highness against
possible ... possible unpleasantness, especially as your highness
desired ... desired that the platform should remain open to the
public...."

Othomar looked out as Ducardi had done; he saw the infantry drawn up and
the crowd behind; angry, murmuring, drab, threatening:

"But, excellency," he said, aloud, to the governor, "in that case it
would have been better to shut off the platform entirely. This is quite
wrong. The police would have been sufficient to prevent any crowding."

"I was afraid of ... of unpleasantness, highness. Troubled times, the
people so discontented," he whispered, fearing to be overheard by the
equerries.

"Quite wrong," repeated Othomar, angrily, nervously excited. "Let the
infantry march off."

"That's out of the question now," Ducardi hastened to say, with an
unhappy smile. "You understand that that can't be done."

The conversation had been carried on aside, in a half-whispering tone;
yet everybody seemed to listen. All eyes were gazing on the group
surrounding the princes; the others were silent.

"Then let us prolong this regrettable situation as little as possible;
we may as well go," said Othomar; and his voice quivered high, young and
nervous in his clear throat.

The doors were opened; Othomar, in his hurry, stepped out first; the
equerries and aides-de-camp did not follow him at once, as they had to
make way for Prince Herman, who happened to be a little behind. Herman
hurried up to Othomar; the others followed.

The princes made a movement of the head to left and right as though to
bow; but their eyes met the fixed, round eyes of the soldiers, who had
presented arms with a flash; they saluted and walked on to their
compartment a little quickly, with an unpleasant feeling in their backs.

Under the colossal glass roof of the station, behind the files of
soldiers, the crowd stood as still as death, for the humming had almost
ceased; there was no curse nor scornful word heard, but also no cheer,
no loud, loyal hurrah sweet to the ears of princes.

And the faces of those vague people, separated by uniforms and bayonets
from their future ruler, remained gazing fixedly with dull, hostile
eyes, with firmly-closed lips, full of forced restraint, as though to
stare him out of existence in the imperial compartment.

The princes waved their hands from the windows to the dignitaries, who
stood on the platform bowing, saluting. The engine whistled, shrieked,
tore the close atmosphere of humidity under the dome; the train left the
station, drove into the early morning, which was lighter outside the
glass roof, glided as it were over the rainy town upon viaducts, with
canals, streets, squares beneath it; farther on, the pinnacles and
spires of the palaces and churches; the two marble towers of the
cathedral, with the doves nestling in the renascence tracery of the
lace-work of its steeples, standing out pale-white against the sky,
which was now turning blue; then, in the centre of the town--green and
wide, one oasis--the Elizabeth Parks, the white mass of the Imperial
and, behind that, the gigantic bend of the quays, the harbour with its
forest of masts, the oval curve of the horizon of the sea, all wet,
glittering, raining in the distance.

Othomar looked sombrely before him. Herman smiled to him:

"Come, don't think about it any more," he advised him, adding with a
laugh, "Our poor governor has had his appetite spoilt for to-day."

General Ducardi muttered an inward curse:

"Monstrously stupid," Herman heard him mumbling.

"I wanted to show them," said Othomar, suddenly.... He had intended to
say, "that I am not afraid of them." He threw a glance around him, saw
the eyes of Prince Dutri, his equerry, fixed upon him like a basilisk's
and let his voice change from proud to faint-hearted; sadly he
concluded, "that I love them and trust them so completely. Why need it
have happened like this?..."

His voice had sounded faint, to please Prince Dutri; but it displeased
the general. He first glanced aside at his crown-prince and then at the
Prince of Gothland; he drew a comparison; his eye continued to rest
appreciatively, in soldierly approval, on the smart naval lieutenant,
broad and strong, sitting with his hands on his thighs, bending forward
a little, looking back at the white capital as it receded before his
eyes through the slanting rainbeams....

       *       *       *       *       *

After four hours' travelling, Novi, in the province of Xara. The train
stops; the princes and their suite alight, consult clocks, watches. They
express surprise, they walk up and down the platform for half an hour,
for an hour. Prince Herman engages in a busy conversation with the
station-master. It is still raining.

At last the special from Altara is signalled. The train glides in and
stops; the Emperor Oscar alights from the imperial compartment. He is
followed by generals and aides-de-camp: their uniforms, the emperor's
included, have lost something of their smartness and hang in tired
creases from their shoulders, like clothes worn a long time. The
emperor, still young, broad and sturdy and only just turning grey, walks
with a firm step; he embraces his son, his nephew, brusquely, hastily.
The imperial party disappear into the waiting-room; Ducardi and one of
the Gothlandic officers follow them. The interview, however, is a short
one: in ten minutes they reappear on the platform; brief words and
handshakes are exchanged; the emperor steps back into his compartment,
the crown-prince into his. The prince's train waits until his father's
passes it--a last wave of the hand--then it too steams away....

Care lies like a cloud upon Othomar's forehead. He remembers his
father's words: in a desperate condition, our fine old city. The
Therezia Dyke may be giving way; so little energy in the municipal
council; thousands of people without a roof to cover them, fleeing,
spending the night in churches, in public buildings. And his last word:

"Send some of them to St. Ladislas...."

Othomar reflects; all are silent about him, depressed by the after-sound
of the emperor's words, which have painted the disaster anew, brought it
afresh before their eyes: the eyes of Ducardi, who knows himself to be
more ready with sword in war than with sympathy in cases of inundation;
the eyes of Dutri, still filled with the mundane glamour of the
incomparable capital. Some part of their self-concentration falls
silent; a thought of what they are about to see crosses their minds.

And Othomar reflects. What shall he do, what can he do? Is it not too
much that is asked of him? Can he, _can_ he combat the stress of the
waters?

"Oh, this rain, this rain!" he mutters, secretly clenching his fist.

Five hours' more travelling. The towers of the city, the crenulated
outline and Titanic plateaus of St. Ladislas, with its bastions, shoot
up on the horizon, shift to one side when approached. The train stops,
in the open country, at a little halting-place; the princes know that
the Central Station is flooded; the whole railway-management has been
transferred to this halt. And suddenly they stand in the presence of the
smooth, green, watery expanse of the Zanthos, which has spread itself
into one sea of water, broad and even, hardly rippled, like a wrath
appeased. A punt is waiting and carries them through ruins of houses,
through floating household goods. A dead horse catches on to the punt; a
musty odour of damp decay hovers about. At an over-turned house, men in
a punt are busied fishing up a corpse; it hangs on their boat-hooks with
slack arms and long, wet hair, the pallid, dead head drooping backwards;
it is a woman. Herman sees Othomar's lips quiver.

Now they float through a street of tall, deserted houses in a poor
suburb. This part has been flooded for days. They alight in a square;
the people are there; they cheer. Louder and louder they cheer, moved by
the sight of their prince, who has come across the water to save them. A
group of students shout, call out his name and cheer and wave their
coloured caps.

Othomar shakes hands with the mayor, the minister for waterways, the
governor of Altara and other dignitaries. His heart is full; he feels a
sob welling up from his breast.

From among the group of students one steps forward, a big, tall lad:

"Highness!" he cries. "May we be your guard-of-honour?"

Etiquette hardly exists here, though the dignitaries look angry.
Othomar, remembering his own student days, not yet so long ago, presses
the student's hand; Prince Herman does the same; and the students grow
excited and once more shout and clamour:

"Hurrah! Hurrah! Othomar for ever! Gothland for ever!"

Behind this square the city is perceived to be in distress, a silent
distress from yet greater danger threatening: the old coronation-city,
the city of learning and tradition, the sombre monument of the middle
ages; she looks grey compared with white Lipara, which lies laughing
yonder and is beautiful with new marble on her blue sea, but which does
not love her sovereigns so well as she does, the dethroned capital, with
her gigantic Romanesque cathedral, where the sacred imperial crown with
the cross of St. Ladislas is pressed on the temples of every emperor of
Liparia. Though her masters are faithless to her and have for centuries
lived in their white Imperial over yonder and no longer in the old
castellated fortress of the country's patron saint, she, the old city,
the mother of the country, remains faithful to them with her maternal
love and not because of her oath, but because of her blood, of her
heart, of all her life, which is her old tradition....

       *       *       *       *       *

But, like his father, Othomar was not this time to go to the Castle of
St. Ladislas: the fortress lay too high and too far from the town, too
far from the scene of disasters. Open carriages stood in waiting; they
stepped in, the students flung themselves on horseback; the princes were
to take up their residence in the palace of the cardinal-archbishop, the
primate of Liparia, in the Episcopal, which, together with the cathedral
and the Old Palace, formed one colossal, ancient, grey mass, a town in
itself, the very heart of the city.

They rode quickly on. The people cheered; they look upon them as a train
of deliverers who, they thought, would at last bring them safety.
Between the departure of the emperor and the arrival of the prince a
depression had reigned which, at the sight of Othomar, changed into
morbid enthusiasm.

It became suddenly dark, but not through the sun's setting--it was only
five o'clock in the month of March in the south--it became dark because
of the clouds, the ships in the sky carrying in their tense,
bowl-shaped, giant sails water which already was beginning to trickle
down again in drops. Under that grey sky the cheering of the people rose
in a minor key, when suddenly, as though the swollen clouds were
bursting open with one rent, a flood dashed down in a solitary,
perpendicular sheet of water.

Othomar was sitting with Herman and Ducardi in the first carriage.

"Would not your highness prefer to have the carriage closed?" asked the
old general, helping the prince on with his cape.

Othomar hesitated; he had no time to answer the general; the crowd
increased, became thicker, cheered; and he bowed in acknowledgement,
saluted, nodded. The heavy rain clattered straight down. The hard
rainbeams ran down the princes' and the general's necks, down their
backs, soaked their knees. The crowd stood sheltered under an irregular
roof of umbrellas, as though grouped under wet, black stars, filled the
narrow streets of the old city, pressed in between the outriders and the
carriage: the coachman had to drive more slowly.

"Won't you have the carriage shut?" Herman repeated after Ducardi.

Othomar still hesitated. Then--and he himself thought his words a little
theatrical and did not know how they would sound--he answered aloud:

"No, do not let us be afraid of the water; they have all suffered from
the water here."

But Ducardi looked at him; he felt something quiver inside him for his
prince....

The carriage remained open. In one of the landaus following, Prince
Dutri looked round furiously to see how much longer the Duke of Xara
meant to let himself be saturated with rain and his suite with him. In
the narrow, high streets near the cathedral they had to drive almost at
a walking-pace, right through the cheering of the crowding populace.
Soaked to the skin, the Crown-prince of Liparia with his following
arrived at the cardinal-archbishop's; they left a trail of water behind
them on the staircases and in the corridors of the Episcopal.



5

In changed uniforms, a short dinner with the high prelate; a few canons
and minor ecclesiastics sit down with them. The room is large and
sombre, barely lighted with a feeble glimmer of candles; the silver
gleams dully on the dressers of old black oak; the frescoes on the
walls--sacred subjects--are barely distinguishable. A silent haste
quickens the jaws; the conversation is conducted in an undertone; the
servants, in their dark livery, move as though on tiptoe. The cardinal,
on either side of whom the princes are seated, is tall and thin, with a
refined, ascetic face and the steel-blue eyes of an enthusiast; his
voice issues from low down in his throat, like that of an oracle; he
says something of the Lord's will and makes a submissive gesture with
both hands, the fingers lightly outspread, as Jesus does in the old
pictures. One of the priests, the cardinal's private secretary, a young
man with a round, pink face and soft, white hands, laughs rather loudly
at a joke of Prince Dutri, who, sitting next to him, tells a story about
a countess in Lipara whom they both know. The cardinal casts a stern
glance at the frivolous secretary.

After the hurried dinner, the princes and their suite ride into the town
on horseback, cheered wherever they go. The water already mounts close
to the cathedral and the Archiepiscopal Palace. Groups of men, women and
children, sobbing, flow towards the prince, as he rides across the dark
squares; they carry torches about him, as the gas is not everywhere
lighted; the ruddy flares look strange, romantic, over the ancient dark
mass of the walls and are reflected with long streaks of blood in the
water lying in the narrow alleys. A large house of many storeys and rows
of little windows appears to have suddenly gone under: a sudden
mysterious pressure of water, filtering from the foundations through the
masonry of the cellars, making its treacherous way through the least
crack or crevice. The inhabitants save themselves in skiffs, which pass
with little red lights through the black, watery town; a child cries at
the top of its voice. They are poor people there in hundreds, living,
packed as in boxes. The princes alight and step into a boat and are
rowed to the spot; it becomes known who they are; they themselves help
an old woman with three children, all wet to the waist, to climb on to a
raft; they themselves give them money, shout instructions to them. And
they point to the old fortress of St. Ladislas as a refuge....

But a cry arises, farther on, a cry at first not clearly perceived in
the darkness of the evening, then at last distinctly audible:

"The Therezia Dyke! The Therezia Dyke!..."

The princes want to go there; it is not possible on horseback; the only
way is in boats. Prince Herman himself grasps the sculls; in the next
boat Dutri declares to Von Fest, one of the Gothlandic equerries, that,
taken all round, he thinks Venice more comfortable....

"The Therezia Dyke! The Therezia Dyke!..."

The dyke lies like the black back of a great, long beast just outside
the town, on the left bank of the Zanthos, and protects the whole St.
Therezia district, the eastern portion of the city, which stands
tolerably high, from the river, which generally overflows in springtime.
The boats glide over the water-streets; a landing is possible in the
Therezia Square; lanterns are burning; torches flare, ruddy
scintillations dart over the water. The square is large and wide; the
houses stand black round about it and surround it in the night with
their irregular lines of gables and chimneys, with the massive pile of
the church of St. Therezia, whose steeples are lost in the dark sky; in
the centre of the square rises a great equestrian statue of a Liparian
emperor, gigantic in motionless bronze, stretching one arm, sword in
hand, over the petty swarming of the crowd.

Othomar and Herman have sent their three equerries, Dutri, Leoni and Von
Fest, for whom horses have been found and saddled, to the dyke, which
protects a whole suburb of villas, factories and the St. Therezia
railway-station against the waters of the Zanthos, which has already
poured its right bank over the country and is drowning it. The princes
stand in the middle of the square on the steps of the pedestal of the
statue; they would have liked to go on farther, but the mayor himself
has begged them to stay where they are: farther on mortal danger
threatens at every moment.... All that could be done has been done;
there is nothing more to do but wait.

Quarters of an hour, half-hours, pass. This waiting for terrible news
calms them; they hope afresh. The officers ride to and fro; the villas
and factories yonder are deserted: a whole town lies empty, forsaken.
Prince Dutri, turning his horse, which he has ridden out of breath,
assures them that the embankment will hold firm; after he has spoken
with the princes, he is surrounded: it is the occupiers of the villas,
the manufacturers, who overwhelm him with questions, fortified by the
self-assurance of the imperial equerry. Dutri gallops off once more.

Now the doors of the church are opened wide, quite wide; at the end of
the vista, between the pillars, the tiny lights glitter on the altar; a
procession files out slowly: a mitred bishop, priests, acolytes, singing
and carrying banners and swinging clouds of smoke from their censers;
behind the upraised crucifix, the relics of St. Therezia, in their
antique shrine of medieval gold and crystal and precious stones, round
or roughly cut; it is borne under a canopy and in the shimmering gleam
of candles it glitters and sparkles like a sacred jewel, like a
constellation, across that sombre square, through that black night of
disaster; flicker the giant emeralds, glitters the precious chased gold
and before the Most Holy the crowded populace draws back on either side
and falls upon its knees. This is the fifth time to-day that the
procession goes its round, that the reliquary is borne on high, to
exorcize the calamity. It passes the statue, the princes kneel down; the
Latin of the chant, the gleam of the relics in their shrine, the cloud
of the incense pass over them with the blessing of the bishop....

The procession has brought stillness to the square, but a murmur now
approaches as from afar.... The crowd seems to surge as though in one
wave, nobody is now kneeling; the very procession is broken up and
confused. Through the throng rushes the report: the dyke has given
way!...

They do not yet believe it; but suddenly from above the fort of St.
Ladislas, which spreads its ramparts about the castle, a shot thunders
out and vibrates over the black city and shakes through the black sky as
though its rebound were breaking against the lowering clouds. A second
shot thunders after it, as with giant cymbals of catastrophe, a third
... the whole town knows that the Zanthos has broken the dyke.

The whole square is in confused motion, like a swarm of ants; troops of
tardy fugitives still come thronging in, poor ones now and indigent, who
had not been able to fly earlier, who had been still hoping; through the
crush Prince Dutri, panting, cursing, on horseback, terror in his eyes,
strives to reach the statue; the distant murmur as of a sea comes nearer
and nearer. Men scatter along the streets, on foot or in boats; the
disordered procession, with the glitter of its reliquary, seeming to
reel on the billows of a human sea, scatters towards the church.

"Is not even the square safe?" asks Othomar.

He can hardly speak, his chest seems cramped as it were with iron, his
eyes fill with tears, an immense despair of impotence and pity suffuses
his soul.

The mayor shakes his head:

"The square lies lower than the suburbs, highness; you cannot remain
here. For God's sake go back to the Episcopal in a boat!..."

But the princes insist on remaining, though the murmur grows louder and
louder.

"Go into the church in that case, highnesses: that is the only safe
place left," the mayor beseeches. "I beg you, for God's sake!"

The square is already swept clean, the torch-bearers lead the princes to
the steps of the church; the Zanthos comes billowing on, like a soft
thunder skimming the ground.

Inside the church the organ sounds; they sing, they pray all through the
night. And the whole night long everything outside remains chaotically
black, gently murmuring....

When the first dawn pales over the sky, which begins in the distance to
assume tints of rose and grey, faint opal and mother-of-pearl, Othomar
and Herman and the equerries emerge on the steps of the church.

The square stands under water; the houses rise out of the water; the
statue of Othomar III. waves its bronze arm and sword over a lake that
ripples in the morning breeze.

From the Therezia Square to the Cathedral Square everything lies under
water.



6

"TO HER IMPERIAL MAJESTY THE EMPRESS OF LIPARIA

                                 "THE EPISCOPAL,
                                          "ALTARA,
                                   "--_March_, 18--.

"MY ADORED MOTHER,

"Your letter reproaches me with not writing to you two days ago, without
delay; forgive me, for my thoughts have so constantly been full of you.
But I felt so tired yesterday, after a busy day, and I lacked the
strength to write to you in the evening. Let me tell you now of my
experiences.

"You describe to me the terrible impression produced at Lipara by the
telegram from here about the breach in the Therezia Dyke and how none
slept at the Imperial. We too were up all night, in St. Therezia's
Church. No such fearful inundation has been remembered for fifty years;
at the time of that which my father remembers in his childhood, the
Therezia Square was not flooded and the water only came as far, they
say, as the great iron-factory.

"How can I describe to you what I felt that night, while we were hoping
and waiting, hoping in turn that God and His Holy Mother would ward off
this disaster from us and waiting for the catastrophe to burst forth! We
stood on the pedestal of the equestrian statue, unable to do anything
more. Oh, that impotence about me, that impotence within me! I kept on
asking myself what I was there for, if I could do nothing to help my
people. Never before, dearest Mother, have I felt this feeling of
impotence, of inability to counteract the inevitable, so possess my
soul, until it was wholly filled with despair; but neither have I ever
so thoroughly realized that everything in life has its two sides, that
the greatest disaster has not only its black shadow but also its bright
side, for never, never have I felt so strongly and utterly, through my
despair, the love for our people, a thing that I did not yet know could
exist in our hearts as a truth, as I then felt it quivering all through
me; and this love gave me an immense melancholy at the thought that all
of them, the millions of souls of our empire, will never know, or, if
they did know, believe that I loved them so, loved them as though my own
blood ran in their veins. Nor do I wish to deceive myself and I well
know that I should never have this feeling at Lipara, but I have it
here, in our ancient city, which gives us all her sympathy. I feel here
that I myself am more of a Slav, like our Altarians, than a Latin, like
our southerners in Lipara and Thracyna; I feel here that I am of their
blood, a thing that I do not feel yonder.

"No doubt much has been said and written in the papers about the want of
tact of the Marquis of Dazzara, with his foolish guard-of-honour at the
station at our departure; be that as it may, I felt great sadness in the
train to think that, in spite of their having come to see me leave, they
did not seem to love me. I know you will again disapprove of this as
false sensitiveness on my part, but I cannot help it, my dear Mother: I
am like that, I am hypersensitive to sympathy in general and to the
utterances of our people in particular. And for that reason too I love
the people here, very simply and childishly perhaps, because they show
that they love me: enthusiasm everywhere, genuine, unaffected enthusiasm
wherever we go; and yet what are we able to do for them, except give
them money! I find this sympathy among the lowest: workmen and labourers
whom I had never seen before to my knowledge and to whom I could only
speak three or four words of comfort--and I can never find much else to
say, it is always the same--and among the soldiers, although they must
feel instinctively, in spite of never seeing me except in uniform, that
I am no soldier at heart; and also among the students, the priests, the
civic authorities and the higher functionaries. Yesterday we went round
everywhere, to all the places appointed as refuges: not only the
barracks and shops and factories, but even some of the rooms at the
law-courts, two of the theatres and the prison, poor souls! And also St.
Ladislas. From the Round Tower we had a view of the surrounding country:
towards the east there was nothing but water and water, like a sea. My
heart felt as though screwed tight into my breast.

"We went to the university also. I remembered most of the professors
from two years ago, when I was here as an undergraduate.

"It was a terrible scene outside the town. Oh, Mamma, there were
hundreds, there were thousands of corpses, laid out side by side on a
meadow, as in a mortuary, before the burial, for identification! I saw
harrowing scenes, my heart was torn asunder: troops of relations who
sought or who, sobbing, had found. A terrible air of woe filled the
whole atmosphere. I felt sick and turned quite pale, it required all my
energy to prevent myself from fainting, but Herman put his arm through
mine and supported me as well as he was able without ostentation, while
a couple of doctors from among the group of physicians to whom I was
speaking gave me something to smell. Oh, Mamma, it was a terrible
spectacle, all those pallid, shapeless, swollen corpses, on the green
grass, and, above, the sky, which had become deep blue again!

"I have informed the municipal council, in accordance with your wish and
my father's, that you are each of you presenting a personal donation of
a million florins and I presented my own at the same time. The whole
world seems in sympathy with us; money is flowing in from every side,
but the damage is like a pit that cannot be filled up. As you say, the
donation of our Syrian friends is truly princely and oriental.

"What more have I to tell you? I really do not know; my brain is
confused with a nightmare of ghastly visions and I have difficulty in
thinking logically. But I promise you, my dear Mother, to do what I can
and to do it with all my might; and all I ask is that you will send me a
single word to tell me that you are not too dissatisfied with your boy.

"As my father desires, I will stay here another week; it seems to do the
people good to see us, they love us so. They were enraptured when it was
announced that after my departure you and Thera were coming to Altara.
You with your soft hand will be able to do so much that we have omitted.
How they do love us here! And why are we not always at St. Ladislas?
Though the fortress is sombre, it is bright with their sympathy.

"But do not let me write to you so poetically in these distressful days,
in which we should be practical. Herman's society does me a deal of good
and I can do more when he is by my side. General Ducardi is a fine,
indefatigable fellow, as always. The others have all been very willing
and practical; and, if I may be allowed respectfully to differ from my
Father, I am inclined to think that the municipal council does what it
can. It is true, an English engineer told me that with better
precautions and a more thorough supervision the Therezia Dyke would
perhaps have held out; however, I don't know.

"Herman will accompany me on my journey through the provinces. We shall
go to Lycilia and Vaza and so far as possible to the lowlands. These are
of course in the worst case.

"I have just received the telegrams: the Marquis of Dazzara dismissed
and the Duke of Mena-Doni--I don't like that man--governor of the
capital! Lipara under martial law! And will my father succeed in
preserving our house of peers by this dissolution of the house of
deputies?

"Dearest Mother, his eminence has just sent to ask me to receive him. I
do not want to keep him waiting and therefore close my letter hurriedly;
with a fond embrace, I am, with fondest and most respectful love,

                                             "your own boy,
                                                           "OTHOMAR."



CHAPTER II


1

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

       *       *       *       *       *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

       *       *       *       *       *

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

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

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

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

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

       *       *       *       *       *

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

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

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

"The cook?..."

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

"Let him come in...."

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

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

"Forgive me, excellency...."

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

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

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

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

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

"There are larks," she says.

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

The duchess shrugs her shoulders, laughing a little:

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

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

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



2

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



3

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

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

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

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

"How are you enjoying your tour?"

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

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

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

"_Ma chère Alexa_, take care!" says he, wagging his finger at her.

"Why?" she retorts, defiantly.

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

She laughs aloud:

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

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

"What are you laughing at?" she asks.

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

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

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

"I?"

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

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

"As you carry everything."

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

"A good idea...."

"Dutri...."

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

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

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

"Do you ever hear of him now?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



4

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Highness!..."

"Andro, come here...."

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

"What, Andro?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Are you feverish?" he asked.

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

He dared not say it.

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

"Would you like a doctor fetched from Vaza?"

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

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

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

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

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

"Are you asleep, Andro?"

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

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

The man listened:

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

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

The man did as he was told.

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

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

"My poor princie!..."

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



5

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

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

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

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

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

"I'm all right," he replied.

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

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

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

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

Othomar was astonished, refused to understand.

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

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

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

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

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

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

And he wrote:

                 "To HER MAJESTY ELIZABETH
                    "EMPRESS OF LIPARIA.

                                  "CASTEL VAZA,
                                 "--_April_, 18--.

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

                                                              "OTHOMAR."

Then he rang and, when the footman appeared:

"My valet, Andro."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



6

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The duchess laughed:

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

"But none of the equerries...."

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

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

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

"That was Zanti," whispered the duchess.

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

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

"Was that young girl his daughter?"

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

"Prince Zanti, is he not?"

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

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

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

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

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

He turned towards her, tried to laugh:

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

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

"Highness!" she cried.

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

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

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

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

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



7

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

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

Othomar pointed with the pencil across the map:

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

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

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

Othomar repeated what the duchess had told him.

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

"Huts?" asked Othomar.

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

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

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

General Ducardi compressed his bushy eyebrows:

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

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

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

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

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

Ducardi gnawed his moustache with a wry smile:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Von Fest shrugged his shoulders:

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

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

Again Von Fest shrugged his shoulders:

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

Ducardi looked him straight in the face:

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

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

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

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

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

"Yes," answered the Gothlandic colonel, simply.

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

"That must be they," said Leoni.

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

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

"Ask if Zanti is here."

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

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

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

"The unmannerly fellow!" muttered Thesbia.

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

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

"What then?" asked the aide, haughtily.

"Dwellings," answered Zanti, curtly.

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

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

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

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

Zanti looked him in the eyes:

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

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

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

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

"The inundation is not a disaster."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Zanti looked at Othomar:

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

Herman burst out laughing:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Shall we return to Castel Vaza, highness?"

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

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

But he held out his hand:

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

The colonel pressed the hand which the prince offered him:

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

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

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

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



8

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"If your highness permits me...."

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

"Come in, duchess...."

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

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

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

She saw that his eyes were swimming with moisture:

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

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

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

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

He pressed her hand; she retained his:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Oh, Alexa!..."

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

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



9

 "To HIS IMPERIAL HIGHNESS THE DUKE OF XARA,
                             "LYCILIA.

                          "THE IMPERIAL,
                                  "LIPARA,
                             "--_April_, 18--.


"MY DEAR BROTHER,

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

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

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

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



CHAPTER III


1

It was after the opening of the new parliament. The sun streamed as
though with square patches of molten gold along the white palaces of the
town, touching with blue what was shadow in the corners.

Two regiments of grenadiers, red and blue, stood in two double lines,
drawn up along the principal streets which led from the Parliament House
to the Imperial. The crowd pressed and tossed and cheered; all the
windows, open wide, swarmed with heads; people looked on from every
balcony. A shot thundered from Fort Wenceslas on the sea; the emperor
returned; the grenadiers presented arms in company after company....

       *       *       *       *       *

The lancers lead the van, blue and white, with streaming pennants at the
points of their lances, six squadrons of them. The whole strength of the
throne-guards, white, with breastplates of glittering gold flashing in
the sunlight above the black satin skins of the stallions, ride halberd
on thigh, surrounding the gently swaying state-carriages, scintillating
with rich gilding and bright crystal and two of them crowned with the
imperial crown, with teams of six and eight plumed greys. The horses
foam over their bits, impatient, nervously pawing the ground, prancing
because of the slow, ceremonious pace along the blinding, flagged
roadway. In the first coach, the master of ceremonies, the Count of
Threma; in the second, with the crown and the team of eight--and the
roar of the cheering rises from behind the hedge of soldiers--the
emperor, his uniform all gold, his robes of scarlet and ermine, his
crown upon his head. It is the only time that the people have seen their
emperor wear his crown.

And they cheer. But the emperor makes no acknowledgment: through the
glass of the coach he looks out, to left and right in turns, at the
crowd, with a proud smile of self-consciousness and victory; and his
face, full of race, full of force, cold with will, proud with authority,
is inaccessible in its smile as that of a Roman emperor on his triumphal
entry.

It is a triumphal entry, this return from the Parliament House to his
Imperial: a triumph over that which they denied him and upon which he
has now laid his heavy hand, showing them all that his mere will can
bend them to his word and purpose. And the cheers rise louder and louder
from that capricious crowd, restrained like a woman by a ruler whom it
now adores for his strength and admires for his imperial might, upon
which he leans, as he passes from the Parliament House to his own
palace, as though it were a whole army that lived upon his nod; and
louder and louder, louder and louder the cheers ring out that sunny
afternoon over the marble houses; and the emperor smiles continually, as
though his smile meant:

"Cheer away! What else can you do but cheer?..."

In the next coach rides the Duke of Xara, robed, crowned; he stares
rigidly over the vociferating crowd with the same glance that his mother
reserves for the populace. In the next to that, the new governor-general
of the capital, the head of the emperor's military household, the Duke
of Mena-Doni, a rougher soldier than the Marquis of Dazzara and a less
practised courtier, under whose military fist the white capital, like a
beaten slave, crouched low during the martial law proclaimed after a
single hour of disturbance that ventured to follow upon the emperor's
decision to dissolve the house of deputies. His coarse, sensual mouth
smiles with the same smile as that of the emperor, whose rude force he
seems to impersonate; and he too seems to say:

"Cheer away, shout hurrah!"

Then the following carriages: the imperial chancellor, Count Myxila; the
ministers: seven of them forming part of the twelve who wished to
resign, the others chosen from among the most authoritative of the old
nobility in the house of peers itself!

Cheer away, shout hurrah!

Behind the coaches of the higher court-officials, the Xara cuirassiers,
the crown-prince's own regiment; behind them, a regiment of colonials:
Africans, black as polished ebony, with eyes like beads, their thick
mouths thrust forwards, clad in the muslin-like snow of their burnouses;
behind them, two regiments of hussars on heavy horses, in their long,
green, gold-frogged coats and their tall busbies.

Was ever parliament opened thus before, with such a display of military
force? And outside the town, on the high parade-grounds, do not the
people know that there are troops drawn together from every province,
camping there for the manoeuvres, the date of which has been
accelerated? And the increased garrisons of the forts, the squadron in
the harbour? Do the people themselves feel that they can do nothing else
than cheer and is that why they are cheering now, happy once more in
their cheering, with Roman docility and southern submission, enamoured
of the emperor because of the weight of his crushing fist, loving the
crown-prince for the attractive charm of his attitude in the north, or
perhaps because they think him interesting after an unsuccessful attempt
on his life?

And they seem not to feel that, through the grenadiers presenting arms,
they see neither the emperor nor the crown-prince saluting; they cheer
away, loving them in spite, perhaps because, of their indifference; they
cheer away like madmen....

Slowly the procession wends its way along the interminable main streets.
The whole city, despite its marble, trembles with the clatter of the
horses' hoofs upon the flagged pavement. Between the front escort and
the endless escort in the rear, the state-carriages, with their
glittering throne-guards, shimmer like a kind of jewel, small, rare,
carefully guarded. The cavalry are at this moment the soul of Lipara,
their echoing step its heart-beat; and between the grenadiers and the
tall houses the massed and cheering populace seems to have hardly room
to breathe.

The procession approaches the Imperial. Along the immense marble
fore-court the lancers and cuirassiers range themselves on three sides,
before the wings and along the front. Outside them the guards are drawn
up in line. The Africans close off the courtyard....

The carriages pull up; and the emperor alights. With the crown-prince by
his side, he goes through the vestibule up the stairs. The corridors of
the palace swarm with gold-laced uniforms; a packed suite crowds up
behind Oscar and Othomar. The master of the robes, with twelve grooms of
the bed-chamber, comes towards the emperor, who takes off his crown, as
does the crown-prince; their robes are unfastened for them.

They go to the great white hall, white with the Corinthian columns with
gilt capitals. The empress and the Princess Thera are there, surrounded
by their ladies. It is a great day: in this sun-apotheosis of the
opening of parliament the monarchy is triumphing over the threats of the
future and deferring that future itself. The empress, in her trailing
pale-mauve velvet, steps towards her spouse and curtseys before him
ceremoniously. The princess, the mistress of the robes, all the ladies
curtsey....

Outside, in front, the square is now filled by the multitude; an excited
popular clamour surges up against the immovable palace, as it were the
sea against a rock. The doors of the centre balcony are opened. The
emperor and the prince will show themselves....

"Only just salute once," whispers the emperor to his son, sternly.

The sun outside rains down gold upon the swarming mass, tinging it with
many-changing, chameleon, southern tints between the white, motionless
wings of the Imperial, whose caryatids look down placidly. The imperial
pair step on the balcony. Hats are thrown up towards them; the yelling
bellows with a shout as from a single noisy, vulgar throat and echoes
through the open doors against the gilt ceiling and columns of the white
hall. The empress is frightened by it, turns pale; her breath
catches....

On the balcony the Emperor of Liparia salutes his excited people with a
solitary wave of the hand; the Duke of Xara bows his head slightly.



2

There was no more talk of a revision of the constitution and reform of
the hereditary house of peers. The constitutional majority of
three-fourths which is required in the house of deputies before such a
proposal can be taken into consideration, though there at first, no
longer existed after the new elections. Oscar, immediately after his
return from Altara, had shown them his daring strength. Lipara was
surrounded with troops: this was as well, for the manoeuvres, for the
King of Syria, who was expected. The forts were strengthened, the fleet
lay in the harbour; then came the imperial decree that the house of
deputies should simply ... be dissolved. What an outcry, after the
promulgation of that decree, in the newspapers and in the streets! For
one moment, at night, there was an abortive riot. But the emperor,
furious with the Marquis of Dazzara for his delay in taking prompt and
energetic measures, had next day affirmed his august dissatisfaction.
The marquis was shown that there were moments when the emperor was not
to be trifled with; the emperor dismissed him personally, on the spot,
and told him he could go. Crushed, his eyes full of despair, the marquis
left the Imperial; in the fore-court his carriage crossed that of the
Duke of Mena-Doni, lieutenant-general of the hussars; he saw the duke's
sensual, Neronic head, covetous with ambition, staring up at the front
of the palace. The marquis threw himself back in his carriage, wringing
his hands and weeping like a child....

That same morning martial law was proclaimed at Lipara and the Duke of
Mena-Doni appointed governor of the capital. With a great military
display and a speech of three words the emperor dissolved the house of
deputies. The people trembled, beaten off, thrashed, reduced to
crouching at the imperial feet. The decree was issued for the general
election. Must the people be chastised to make them attached to their
emperor? Was it because of the innumerable articles in the newspapers of
the northern provinces--Altara, Vaza and Lycilia--which bestowed all
their sympathy upon their most charming, charitable crown-prince,
indefatigable, omnipresent, mitigating what suffering he could? Was it
because of the colossal, fabulous presents of millions contributed from
the imperial privy purse to the fund for the victims of the disaster?
The result of the elections became known: the new house of deputies
contained a bare, impotent majority of constitutionals. What did it
profit that the liberal papers shrieked of intrigue and undue pressure?
Without and within the city lay the army; each day the emperor showed
himself, with by his side the Duke of Mena-Doni....

The emperor invited the old ministry to remain in office, but dismissed
those of the ministers who were not absolutely authoritative.

The crisis was at an end. The great spring manoeuvres were to take place
on the parade-ground so soon as the King and Queen of Syria arrived at
Lipara.

In Othomar there sprang up a vast admiration for his father. He did not
love him with the fondness, the intimacy, the still almost childish
dependence with which he loved the empress; he had always looked up to
him; as a child he had been afraid of him. Now, after the personal
courage which he had seen the emperor display, the sovereign power which
he had watched him exercise, his majesty rose higher before Othomar's
eyes, as it were the statue of a demi-god. He felt himself a lowly
mortal beside him, when he thought:

"What should _I_ have done, if I had had to act in this case? Should I
have dared to take the prompt decision to dissolve the house of deputies
and should I not have feared an immediate revolution in every corner of
the country? Should I, after the disturbances, have dared to dismiss the
Marquis of Dazzara at once, like a lackey, attached as he was to our
house and descended from our most glorious nobility? Should I have dared
to summon that duke, that swashbuckler, with his cruel face, even before
I had dismissed the marquis, so that the one arrived as the other
departed?"

And he already saw himself hesitating in imagination, not knowing what
would be best, above all not knowing what would be most just; he
pictured himself advised by old Count Myxila, at last determined to
dissolve the deputies, but not dismissing the marquis, not declaring
martial law in Lipara and assembling the troops too late and seeing the
revolution burst out at all points simultaneously, with bomb upon
bomb....

To do what was most just, this seemed to him the most difficult thing
for a sovereign.

But the emperor's monarchic triumph had this result, that, clearly as
Othomar saw his own weakness, a reflex of strength and determination was
cast upon him from his father himself, by whose side he stood. Moreover,
he had not much time for brooding. Each day brought its special duties.
Scarcely was he able to allow himself one hour of solitary repose. He
was accustomed to this life of constant movement, of constant public
appearances, now here, now there, so thoroughly accustomed to it that he
did not feel the fatigue which was already exhausting him before his
tour in the north and which had now eaten into his nerves and marrow. He
gave this fatigue no thought, regarded it perhaps as an organic languor,
a transitory symptom, which was bound to pass. And each day brought its
own fatigue. Thus he had grown accustomed to rise early, at seven every
morning; Lipara then still lay white and peaceful in its rosy slumber of
the dawn; he rode out on his thorough-bred Arab, black Emiro, with his
favourite collie close behind him, galloping with him, its pointed nose
poked out, its shaggy collar sticking up; unaccompanied by equerries, he
rode through the park of the Imperial to the Elizabeth Parks, in the
afternoon the resort of elegant carriages and horsemen, but in the
morning peaceful, wide and deserted, with barely a solitary early rider,
who made way respectfully for the prince and took his hat off low. Then
he rode along the white quays with their villas and palm-trees, their
terraces and aloes; and the incomparable harbour lay before him, always
growing an intenser blue beneath the pink morning light, which became
cruder. Higher up, the docks, the ships, the hum of industry already
audible. Slowly he walked his horse along the harbour; in the porticoes
of the villas he sometimes caught a glimpse of a woman's figure, saw her
eyes following him through roses and clematis. He loved this ride
because of the soft, fresh air, because of his horse, his dog, because
of his solitude with these two, because of the long, silent quays, the
wide, silent sky, the distant horizon still just enveloped in latest
morning mist. The morning breeze blew against his forehead under his
uniform cap; thoughts wandered at random through his brain. Then he
shook himself free from this voluptuousness, rode back to the town and
went to the Xaverius Barracks, occupied by the lancers; to the Wenceslas
Barracks occupied by the grenadiers; or to the Berengar Barracks,
occupied by the hussars. Here he enquired, investigated, inspected; and
here he found his equerries, Dutri and Leoni; he rode back with them to
the palace, and repaired to his father's room. This was the hour when
Count Myxila came to the emperor and when affairs of state were
discussed with the imperial chancellor; lately the crown-prince had
assisted at these meetings. Next he visited the empress, who was
expecting him: it was generally a most delightful moment, this which
they spent confidentially together before lunch, a moment full of charm
and intimacy. He sat close by her on a low chair, took her hand, poured
out to her the burdens of his heart, communicated to her his anxiety
about the future, about himself when later he himself would wear the
crown. At such times his eyes peered up through their lashes, with their
dark melancholy; his voice was querulous and begged for comfort. And she
encouraged him: she told him that nothing happened but what had to
happen; that everything was inevitable in the world's great chain of
events, joined link by link; that he must wait for what might come, but
at the same time do his duty; and that he must not unnerve himself with
such endless pondering, which led to nothing. He told her how he feared
his own hesitation and how he suspected that his decisions would always
come too late; and she, gently laughing, replied that, if he knew his
own faults so well, he should train himself to make his mind. He
questioned her about justice--the one thing that seemed impossible to
him on earth--and she referred him to his own feeling, as a human soul.
But yet, intensely sweet as these hours were, he felt that he remained
the same under their interchange of words and that, though words had
been exchanged, nothing was changed within him. Wherefore he thought
himself wicked and was afraid that he did not love his mother enough,
with enough conviction. Then he looked at her, saw her smiling, divined
beneath her smile the nervous dread which would never again relinquish
its grasp of her and felt that she spoke like this only for his sake, to
cheer him, and not from conviction. And his thoughts no longer wandered
discursively about him, as on his morning ride along the quays: they
fell like fine mists one upon the other in his imagination and formed
his melancholy.

Lunch was taken privately. After lunch he sat for an hour to Thera, who
was painting his portrait. In the afternoon there were always different
things to do: exhibitions, charities, institutions of all kinds to be
visited, a foundation-stone to be laid, a man-of-war to be launched.
Every minute was filled; and each day filled his minutes differently
from the day before. Dinner was always a meal of great etiquette and
splendour; every day there were numerous guests: diplomatists, high
officials, officers. It lasted long; it was an emperor's daily
ceremonial banquet. Then in the evening the parties at court, or at the
houses of the ambassadors or dignitaries; the theatres and concerts. The
prince, however, never stayed late. He then read or worked for a couple
of hours in his own room; at twelve o'clock he went to bed.

He was used to this life of monotonous variety, had grown up in it. So
soon as he returned from Lycilia to Lipara--the city was then still
under martial law--he found it waiting for him busier than ever; the
opening of parliament had followed close upon his return. The emperor
was pleased with the crown-prince's

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