Front matter (continued 6)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Silence intervened, a silence freighted with the weight of suspended destinies. There was indeed more to be felt between them, than to be said. But what mattered it, so the hour was theirs? The narrow kingdom of to-day is better worth ruling than the widest sweep of past and future, but not more than once does man hold its fugitive sceptre. Otto felt the nearness of that penetrating sympathy, which is almost a gift of divination. The mere thought of her had seemed to fill the air with her presence.

Steadily, searchingly, she gazed at the thoughtful and earnest countenance of Otto, then she spoke with a touch of domineering haughtiness:

"Why are you here?"

He met her gaze eye in eye.

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

She bent her proud head, partly in acknowledgment of his words, partly to conceal her own confusion.

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

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

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

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

She looked at him amusedly.

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

Otto pointed to the Capitoline hill.

"Yet see how beautiful it is, this Rome of the past!" he spoke with repressed enthusiasm. "Is it not worth braving the dangers of the avalanches that threaten to crush rider and horse—even the wrath of your countrymen, who see in us but unbidden, unwelcome invaders? Ah! Little do they know the magic which draws us hither to their sunny shores from the gloom of our Northern forests! Little they know the transformation this land of flowers works on the frozen heart, that yearns for your glowing, sun-tinted vales!"

"Why did you come to Rome?" she questioned curtly. "To remind us of these trifles,—and incidentally to dispossess us of our time-honoured rights and power?"

Otto shook his head.

"I came not to Rome to deprive the Romans of their own,—rather to restore to them what they have almost forgotten—their glorious past."

"It is useless to remind those who do not wish to be reminded," she replied. "The avalanche of centuries has long buried memory and ambition in those you are pleased to call Romans. Desist, I beg of you, to pursue a phantom which will for ever elude you, and return beyond the Alps to your native land!"

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

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

There was a pause.

Through the overhanging branches glimmered the pale disk of the moon. A soft breeze stirred the leaves of the trees. There was a hushed breathlessness in the air. Fantastic, dream-like, light and shadows played on the majestic tide of the Tiber, and all over the high summits of the hills mysterious shapes, formed of purple and gray mists, rose up and crept softly downward, winding in and out the valleys, like wandering spirits, sent on some hidden, sorrowful errand.

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

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

"What would you make of me?" he replied. "On this alone my heart is set. Take it from me,—I would drift an aimless barque on the tide of time."

She shook her head but avoided his gaze.

"You aim to accomplish the impossible. Crows do not feed on the living, and the dead do not rise again. Ah! How, if your miracle does not succeed?"

Otto drew himself up to his full height.

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

Suddenly a strange thought came over him.

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

"I want you to be frankly my foe," exclaimed the beautiful wife of Crescentius. "You must not pass by like this, without telling me that you are. You speak of a past. Sometimes I think it were better, if there had been no past. Better burn a corpse than leave it unburied. All the friends of my dreams are here,—their shades surround us,—in their company one grows afraid as among the shroudless dead. It is impossible. You cannot mean the annihilation of the past, you cannot mean to be against Rome—against me!"

Otto faced her, pale and silent, vainly striving to speak. He dared not trust himself. As he stepped back, she clutched his arm.

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

"Stephania!"

"Tell me that you hate me."

"Stephania—why do you ask it?"

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

"Tell me all," she sobbed. "I must know all. Do you not feel how near we are? Are you indeed afraid to speak?"

She gazed at him with moist, glorious eyes.

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

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

"Can you ask?"

"Wholly?"

"What do you mean?"

"I thought,—feared,—that you suffered from the same malady as we Romans."

"What malady?"

"Distrust."

There was a pause.

"The temple is beautiful in the moonlight," Stephania said at last. "They tell me you like relics of the olden time. Shall we go there?"

Otto's heart beat heavily as by her side he strode down the narrow path. They approached a little ruined temple, which ivy had invaded and overrun. Fragments lay about in the deep grass. A single column only remained standing and its lonely capital, clear cut as the petals of a lily, was outlined in clear silhouette against the limpid azure.

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

"Be not too hard on me, Stephania, for my love of the world that lies dead around us. I scarcely can explain it to you. The old simple things stir strange chords within me. I love the evening more than the morning, autumn better than spring. I love all that is fleeting, even the perfume of flowers that have faded, the pleasant melancholy, the golden fairy-twilight. Remembrance has more power over my soul than hope."

"Tell me more," Stephania whispered, her head leaning back against the column and a smile playing round her lips. "Tell me more. These are indeed strange sounds to my ear. I scarcely know if I understand them."

He gazed upon her with burning eyes.

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

She pointed in silence to the entrance of the temple.

Otto held out both hands, to assist her in descending the sloping rock. She appeared nervous and uncertain of foot. Hurriedly and agitated, anxious to gain the entrance she slipped and nearly fell. In the next moment she was caught up in his arms and clasped passionately to his heart.

"Stephania—Stephania," he whispered, "I love you—I love you! Away with every restraint! Let them slay me, if they will, by every death my falsehood deserves,—but let it be here,—here at your feet."

Stephania trembled like an aspen in his strong embrace, and strove to release herself, but he pressed her more closely to him, scarcely knowing that he did so, but feeling that he held the world, life, happiness and salvation in this beautiful Roman. His brain was in a whirl; everything seemed blotted out,—there was no universe, no existence, no ambition, nothing but love,—love,—love,—beating through every fibre of his frame.

The woman was very pale.

Timidly she lifted her head. He gazed at her in speechless suspense; he saw as in a vision the pure radiance of her face, the star-like eyes shining more and more closely into his. Then came a touch, soft and sweet as a rose-leaf pressed against his lips and for one moment he remembered nothing. Like Paris of old, he was caught up in a cloud of blinding gold, not knowing which was earth, which heaven.

For a moment nothing was to be heard, save the hard breathing of these two, then Otto held Stephania off at an arm's length, gazing at her, his soul in his eyes.

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

"The fallen angels," was her smiling reply.

Then with a quick, spontaneous movement she flung her bare arms round his neck and drew him toward her.

"And if I did come toward you to prophesy glory and the fulfilment of your dreams?" she murmured, even as a sibyl. "You alone are alive among the dead! What matters it to me that your love is hopeless, that our wings are seared? My love is all for the rejected! I love the proud and solitary eagle better than the stained vulture."

He felt the fire of the strange insatiate kiss of her lips and reeled. It seemed as if the Goddess of Love in the translucence of the moon, had descended, embracing him, mocking to scorn the anguish that consumed his heart, but to vanish again in the lunar shadows.

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

Never perhaps had the beautiful Roman bestowed on mortal man such a glance, as now beamed from her eyes upon the youth. The perfume of her hair intoxicated his senses. Her breath was on his cheek, her sweet lips scarce a hand's breath from his own.

Had Lucifer, the prince of darkness, himself appeared at this moment, or Crescentius started up like a ghost from the gaping stone floor, Stephania could scarcely have changed as suddenly as she did, to the cold impassive rigidity of marble. Following the direction of her stony gaze, Otto beheld emerging as it were from the very rocks above him a dark face and mailed figure, which he recognized as Eckhardt's. Whether or not the Margrave was conscious of having thus unwittingly interrupted an interview,—if he had seen, his own instincts at once revealed to him the danger of his position. Eckhardt's countenance wore an expression of utter unconcern, as he passed on and vanished in the darkness.

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

"He has seen nothing," Otto reassured her.

"To-morrow," she replied, "we meet here again at the hour of the Angelas. And then," she added changing her tone to one of deepest tenderness, "I will test your love,—your constancy,—your loyalty."

They faced each other in a dead silence.

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

She slowly placed her own in them. It was a moment upon which hung the fate of two lives. Otto felt her weakness in her look, in the touch of her hands, which shivered, as they lay in his, as captive birds. And the long smothered cry leaped forth from his heart: What was crown, life, glory—without love! Why not throw it all away for a caress of that hand? What mattered all else?

But the woman became strong as he grew weak.

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

He dropped her hands, his eyes in hers.

Giving one glance backward, where Eckhardt had disappeared, Stephania first began to move with hesitating steps, then seized by an irresistible panic, she gathered up her trailing robe and ran precipitately up the steep path, her fleeting form soon disappearing in the moonlight.

Otto remained another moment, then he too stepped out into the clear moonlit night. In silent rumination he continued his way toward the Aventine.

Past and future seemed alike to have vanished for him. Time seemed to have come to a stand-still.

Suddenly he imagined that a shadow stealthily crossed his path. He paused, turned—but there was no one.

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

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

CHAPTER VIII

THE GOTHIC TOWER

eep quiet reigned in the city, when a man, enveloped in a mantle, whose dimly shadowed form was outlined against the massive, gray walls of Constantine's Basilica glided slowly and cautiously from among the blocks of stone scattered round its foundations and advanced to the fountain which then formed the centre of the square, where the Obelisk now stands. There he stopped and, concealed by the obscurity of the night and the deeper shadows of the monument, glanced furtively about, as if to be sure that he was unobserved. Then drawing his sword, he struck three times upon the pavement, producing at each stroke light sparks from its point. This signal, for such it was, was forthwith answered. From the remote depths of the ruins the cry of the screech-owl was thrice in succession repeated, and, guided by the ringing sound, a second figure emerged from the weeds, which were in some places the height of a man. Obeying the signal of the first comer, the second, who was likewise enveloped in a mantle, silently joined him and together they proceeded half-way down the Borgo Vecchio, then turned to the right and entered a street, at the remote extremity of which there was a figure of the Madonna with its lamp.

Onward they walked with rapid steps, traversed the Borgo Santo Spirito and followed the street Della Lingara to where it opens upon the church Regina Coeli. After having pursued their way for some time in silence they entered a narrow winding path, which conducted them through a deserted valley, the silence of which was only broken by the occasional hoot of an owl or the fitful flight of a bat. In the distance could be heard the splashing of water from the basin of a fountain, half obscured by vines and creepers, from which a thin, translucent stream was pouring and bubbling down the Pincian hillsides in the direction of Santa Trinita di Monte.

They lost themselves in a maze of narrow and little frequented lanes, until at last they found themselves before a gray, castellated building, half cloister, half fortress, rising out of the solitudes of the Flaminian way, before which they stopped. Over the massive door were painted several skeletons in the crude fashion of the time, standing upright with mitres, sceptres and crowns upon their heads, holding falling scrolls, with faded inscriptions in their bony grasp.

The one, who appeared to be the moving spirit of the two, knocked in a peculiar manner at the heavy oaken door. After a wait of some duration they heard the creaking of hinges. Slowly the door swung inward and closed immediately behind them. They entered a gloomy passage. A number of owls, roused by the dim light from the lantern of the warden, began to fly screeching about, flapping their wings against the walls and uttering strange cries. After ascending three flights of stairs, preceded by the warden, whose appearance was as little inviting as his abode, they paused before a chamber, the door of which their guide had pushed open, remaining himself on the threshold, while his two visitors entered.

"How is the girl?" questioned the foremost in a whisper, to which the warden made whispered reply.

Beckoning his companion to follow him, the stranger then passed into the room, which was dimly illumined by the flickering light of a taper. Throwing off his mantle, Eckhardt surveyed with a degree of curiosity the apartment and its scanty furnishings. Nothing could be more dreary than the aspect of the place. The richly moulded ceiling was festooned with spiders' webs and in some places had fallen in heaps upon the floor. The glories of Byzantine tapestry had long been obliterated by age and time. The squares of black and white marble with which the chamber was paved were loosened and quaked beneath the foot-steps and the wide and empty fireplace yawned like the mouth of a cavern.

Straining his gaze after the harper who was bending over a couch in a remote corner of the room, Eckhardt was about to join him when Hezilo approached him.

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

Eckhardt bowed gravely, and with gentle foot-steps they approached a bed in the corner of the room, on which there reposed the figure of a girl, lying so still and motionless that she might have been an image of wax. Her luxurious brown hair was spread over the pillow and out of this frame the pinched white face with all its traces of past beauty looked out in pitiful silence. One thin hand was turned palm downward on the coverlet, and as they approached the fingers began to work convulsively.

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

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

The girl opened her sightless eyes, and a faint smile, that illumined her face, making it wondrously beautiful, passed over her countenance.

"Not yet," she spoke so low that Eckhardt could scarcely catch the words, "but I shall sleep soon."

He knew what she meant, for in her face was already that look which comes to those who are going away. Hezilo looked down upon her in silence, but even as he did so a change for the worse seemed to come to the sick girl, and they became aware that the end had begun. He tried to force some wine between her lips, but she could not swallow, and now, instead of lying still, she continued tossing her head from side to side. Hezilo was undone. He could do nothing but stand at the head of the bed in mute despair, as he watched the parting soul of his child sob its way out.

"Angiola—Angiola—do not leave me—do not go from me!" the harper cried in heart-rending anguish, kneeling down before the bed of the girl and taking her cold, clammy hands into his own. Impelled by a power he could not resist, Eckhardt knelt and tried to form some words to reach the Most High. But they would not come; he could only feel them, and he rose again and took his stand by the dying girl.

She now began to talk in a rambling manner and with that strength which comes at the point of death from somewhere; her voice was clear but with a metallic ring. What Eckhardt gathered from her broken words, was a story of trusting love, of infamous wrong, of dastardly crime. And the harper shook like a branch in the wind as the words came thick and fast from the lips of his dying child. After a while she became still—so still, that they both thought she had passed away. But she revived on a sudden and called out:

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

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

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

The harper pressed his lips to the damp forehead of his child but spoke no word.

"It is bright again—they are calling me—Mother! Hold me up—I cannot breathe."

Hezilo sank on his knees with his head between his hands, shaken by convulsive sobs, while Eckhardt wound his arm round the dying girl, and as he lifted her up the spirit passed. In the room there was deep silence, broken only by the harper's heart-rending sobs. He staggered to his feet with despair in his face.

"She said forgive!" he exclaimed with broken voice. "Man—you have seen an angel die!"

"Who is the author of her death?" Eckhardt questioned, his hands so tightly clenched, that he almost drove the nails into his own flesh.

If ever words changed the countenance of man, the Margrave's question transformed the harper's grief into flaming wrath.

"A devil, a fiend, who first outraged, then cast her forth blinded, to die like a reptile," he shrieked in his mastering grief. "Surely God must have slept, while this was done!"

There was a breathless hush in the death-chamber.

Hezilo was bending over the still face of his child. The dead girl lay with her hands crossed over her bosom, still as if cut out of marble and on her face was fixed a sad little smile.

At last the harper arose.

Staggering to the door he gave some whispered instructions to the individual who seemed to fill the office of warden, then beckoned silently to Eckhardt to follow him and together they descended the narrow winding stairs.

"I will return late—have everything prepared," the harper at parting turned to the warden, who had preceded them with his lantern. The latter nodded gloomily, then he retraced his steps within, locking the door behind him.

Under the nocturnal starlit sky, Eckhardt breathed more freely. For a time they proceeded in silence, which the Margrave was loth to break. He had long recognized in the harper the mysterious messenger who in that never-to-be-forgotten night had conducted him to the groves of Theodora, and who he instinctively felt had been instrumental in saving his life. Something told him that the harper possessed the key to the terrible mystery he had in vain endeavoured to fathom, yet his thoughts reverted ever and ever to the scene in the tower and to the dead girl Angiola, and he dreaded to break into the harper's grief.

They had arrived at the place of the Capitol. It was deserted. Not a human being was to be seen among the ruins, which the seven-hilled city still cloaked with her ancient mantle of glory. Dark and foreboding the colossal monument of the Egyptian lion rose out of the nocturnal gloom. The air was clear but chill, the starlight investing the gray and towering form of basalt with a more ghostly whiteness. At the sight of the dread memory from the mystic banks of the Nile, Eckhardt could not suppress a shudder; a strange oppression laid its benumbing hand upon him.

Involuntarily he paused, plunged in gloomy and foreboding thoughts, when the touch of the harper's hand upon his shoulder caused him to start from his sombre reverie.

Drawing the Margrave into the shadow of the pedestal, which supported the grim relic of antiquity, Hezilo at last broke the silence. He spoke slowly and with strained accents.

"The scene you were permitted to witness this night has no doubt convinced you that I have a mission to perform in Rome. Our goal is the same, though we approach it from divergent points. They say man's fate is pre-ordained, irrevocable, unchangeable—from the moment of his birth. A gloomy fantasy, yet not a baseless dream. By a strange succession of events the thread of our destiny has been interwoven, and the knowledge which you would acquire at any cost, it is in my power to bestow."

"Of this I felt convinced, since some strange chance brought us face to face," Eckhardt replied gloomily.

"'Twas something more than chance," replied the harper. "You too felt the compelling hand of Fate."

"What of the awful likeness?" Eckhardt burst forth, hardly able to restrain himself at the maddening thought, and feeling instinctively that he should at last penetrate the web of lies, though ever so finely spun.

The harper laid a warning finger on his lips.

"You deemed her but Ginevra's counterfeit?"

"Ginevra! Ginevra!" Eckhardt, disregarding the harper's caution, exclaimed in his mastering agony. "What know you of her? Speak! Tell me all! What of her?"

"Silence!" enjoined his companion. "How know we what these ruins conceal? I guided you to the Groves at the woman's behest. What interest could she have in your destruction?"

Eckhardt was supporting himself against the pedestal of the Egyptian lion, listening as one dazed to the harper's words. Then he broke into a jarring laugh.

"Which of us is mad?" he cried. "Wherein did I offend the woman? She plied but the arts of her trade."

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

"Ginevra," growled Eckhardt, his hair bristling and his eyes flaming as those of an infuriated tiger while his fingers gripped the hilt of his dagger.

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

With a moan Eckhardt's hands went to his head. His breast heaved; his breath came and went in quick gasps.

"I do not understand,—I do not understand."

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

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

"I feared to succumb to her spell."

"To that end you had been summoned."

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

"Warned? By whom?"

"Cyprianus, the monk!"

The harper's face turned livid.

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

"A death-bed confession, that makes the devils laugh," Eckhardt replied, then he briefly related the circumstances which had led him into the deserted region of the Tarpeian Rock and his chance discovery of the monk, whose strange tale had been cut short by death.

"He has walked long in death's shadow," said the harper. "Fate was too kind, too merciful to the slayer of Gregory."

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

"The hour of final reckoning is near,—nearer than you dream, the hour when a fiend, a traitor must pay the penalty of his crimes, the hour which shall for ever more remove the shadow from your life. The task required of you is great; you may not approach it as long as a breath of doubt remains in your heart. Only certainty can shape your unrelenting course. Had Ginevra a birth-mark?"

Eckhardt breathed hard.

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

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

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

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

"If you will swear on the hilt of this cross, to be guarded by my counsel, to let nothing induce you to reveal your identity, I will help you," said the harper.

Eckhardt touched the proffered cross, nodding wearily. His heart was heavy to breaking, as the harper slowly outlined his plan.

"The woman has been seized by a mortal dread of her betrayer,—the man who wrecked her life and yours. No questions now,—this is neither the hour or the place! In time you shall know, in time you shall be free to act! Acting upon my counsel, she has bid me summon to her presence a sooth-sayer, one Dom Sabbat, who dwells in the gorge between Mounts Testaccio and Aventine. To him I am to carry these horoscopes and conduct him to the Groves on the third night before the full of the moon."

The harper's voice sank to a whisper, while Eckhardt listened attentively, nodding repeatedly in gloomy silence.

"On that night I shall await you in the shadows of the temple of Isis. There a boat will lie in waiting to convey us to the water stairs of her palace."

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

"The third night before the full of the moon!" he said. "Leave me now, I implore you, that I may care for my dead. Remember the time, the place, and your pledge!"

Eckhardt grasped the proffered hand and they parted.

The harper strode away in the direction of the gorge below Mount Aventine, while Eckhardt, oppressed by strange forebodings, shaped his course towards his own habitation on the Caelian Mount.

Neither had seen two figures in black robes, that lingered in the shadows of the Lion of Basalt.

No sooner had Eckhardt and Hezilo departed, than they slowly emerged, standing revealed in the star-light as Benilo and John of the Catacombs. For a moment they faced each other with meaning gestures, then they too strode off in the opposite directions, Benilo following the harper on his singular errand, while the bravo fastened himself to the heels of the Margrave, whom he accompanied like his own shadow, only relinquishing his pursuit when Eckhardt entered the gloomy portals of his palace.

CHAPTER IX

THE SNARE OF THE FOWLER

hile these events transpired in Rome, a feverish activity prevailed in Castel San Angelo. In day time the huge mausoleum presented the same sullen and forbidding aspect as ever but without revealing a trace of the preparations, which were being pushed to a close within. Under cover of night the breaches had been repaired; huge balistae and catapults had been placed in position on the ramparts, and the fortress had been rendered almost impregnable to assault, as in the time of Vitiges, the Goth.

Events were swiftly approaching the fatal crisis. While Otto languished in the toils of Stephania, whose society became more and more indispensable to him, while with pernicious flattery Benilo closed the ear of the king to the cries of his German subjects and estranged him more and more from his leaders, his country, and his hosts, while Eckhardt vainly strove to arouse Otto to the perils lurking in his utter abandonment to Roman councillors and Roman polity, the Senator of Rome had introduced into Hadrian's tomb a sufficiently strong body of men, not only to withstand a siege, but to vanquish any force, however superior to his own, to frustrate any assault, however ably directed. While the German contingents remained on Roman soil he dared not engage his enemy in a last death-grapple for the supremacy over the Seven Hills, which Otto's war-worn veterans from the banks of the Elbe and Vistula had twice wrested from him. The final draw in the great game was at hand. On this day the envoys of the Electors would arrive in Rome to demand Otto's immediate return to his German crown-lands, whose eastern borders were sorely menaced by the ever recurring inroads of Poles and Magyars. In the event of Otto's refusing compliance with the Electoral mandate, Count Ludeger of the Palatinate was to relieve Eckhardt of his command and to lead the German contingents back across the Alps.

But it was no part of the Senator's policy to permit Otto to return. For while there remained breath in the youth, Rome remained the Fata Morgana of his dreams, and Crescentius remained the vassal of Theophano's son. He could never hope to come into his own as long as the life of that boy-king overshadowed his own. Therefore every pressure must be brought to bear upon the headstrong youth, to defy the Electoral mandate, to rebuff, to offend the Electoral envoys. Then, the great German host recalled, Eckhardt relieved of his command, Otto isolated In a hostile camp, Stephania should cry the watchword for his doom. The inconsiderable guard remaining would be easily vanquished and the son of Theophano, utterly abandoned and deserted, should fall an easy prey to the Senator's schemes, a welcome hostage in the dungeons of Castel San Angelo, for him to deal with according to the dictates of the hour. The task to urge Otto to this fatal step had been assigned to Benilo, but Crescentius was prepared for all emergencies arising from any unforeseen turn of affairs. He had gone too far to recede. If now he quailed before the impending issue, the mighty avalanche he had started would hurl him to swift and certain doom.

Since that fateful hour, when in a moment of unaccountable weakness Crescentius had listened to Benilo's serpent-wisdom, and had arrayed his own wife against the German King, the Senator of Rome had seen but little of Stephania. The preparations for the impending revolt of the Romans, in whose fickle minds his emissaries found a fertile soil for the seed of treason and discontent, engaged him night and day. He seemed present at once on the ramparts, in the galleries and in the vaults of his formidable keep. But when chance for a fleeting moment brought the Senator face to face with his consort, the meaning-fraught smile on the lips of Stephania seemed to assure him that everything was going well. Otto was lost to the world. Heaven and earth seemed alike blotted out for him in her presence. Together they continued to stroll among the ruins, while Stephania poured strange tales into the youth's ear, tales which crept to his brain, like the songs of the Sirens that lure the mariner among the crimson flowers of their abode. And Eckhardt despised the Romans too heartily to fear them, and even therein he revealed the heel of Achilles.

If the present day was gained, the Senator's diplomacy would carry victory from the field, and Benilo had well plied his subtle arts. Yet Crescentius was resolved to attend in person the audience of the envoys. He would with his own ears hear the King's reply to the Electors. If Benilo had played him false? He hardly knew why a lingering suspicion of the Chamberlain crept into his mind at all. But he shook himself free of the thought, which had for a moment clouded the future with its sombre shadow.

As the Senator of Rome hurriedly traversed the galleries of the vast mausoleum, he suddenly found himself face to face with Stephania.

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

At the first words she uttered, Crescentius paused, surprise and gladness in his eyes.

"We are well met, my lord," she said, after a brief greeting, an unwonted tremor vibrating in her tones. "I have sought you in vain all the morning. Release me from the task you have imposed upon me! I cannot go on! I am not further equal to it. It is a game unworthy of you or me!"

The surprise at her words for a moment choked the Senator's utterance and almost struck him dumb.

"Imposed upon?" he replied. "I thought you had accepted the mission freely. Is the boy rebellious?"

"On the contrary! Were he so, perhaps I should not now prefer this request. He is but too pliant."

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

"He has laid his whole soul bare to me; not a thought therein, ever so remote, which I have not sounded. I can not stand before him. My brow is crimsoned with the flush of shame. He gave me truth for a lie,—friendship for deceit. He deserves a better fate than the Senator of Rome has decreed for him."

Crescentius breathed hard.

"The weakness does you honour," he replied after a pause. "Perchance I should have spared you the task. I placed him in your hands, because I dared trust no one else. And now it is too late—too late!"

"It is not too late," replied Stephania.

Crescentius pointed silently to the ramparts, where a score of men were placing a huge catapult in position.

"It is not too late!" she repeated, her cheeks alternately flushing and paling. "To-day, my lord informed me, the King stands at the Rubicon. To-day he must choose, If it is to be Rome, if Aix-la-Chapelle. If he elects to return to the gray gloom of his northern skies, to the sombre twilight of his northern forests, let him go, my lord,—let him go! Much misery will be thereby averted,—much heart-rending despair!"

Crescentius had listened in silence to Stephania's pleading. There was a brief pause, during which only his heavy breathing was heard.

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

"I do not understand you, my lord!"

The Senator regarded his wife with singularly fixed intentness.

"The toils of the Siren Rome are too firm to be snapped asunder like a spider's web."

She covered her face with her hands. Her breath came and went with quick, convulsive gasps.

"It is shameful—shameful—" she sobbed. "Had I never lent myself to the unworthy task! How could you conceive it, my lord, how could you? But it was not your counsel! May his right hand wither, who whispered the thought into your ear!"

Crescentius winced. He felt ill at ease.

"Is it so hard to play the confessor to yonder wingless cherub?" he said with a forced smile.

Stephania straightened herself to her full height.

"When I undertook the shameless task, I believed the son of Theophano a tyrant, an oppressor, his hands stained with the best of Roman blood! Such your lying Roman chroniclers had painted him. I gloried in the thought, to humble a barbarian, whose vain-glorious, boastful insolence meditated new outrages upon us Romans. Yet his is a purer, a loftier spirit, than is to be found in all this Rome of yours! Were it not nobler to acknowledge him your liege, than to destroy him by woman's wiles and smiles?"

"I cannot answer you on these points," Crescentius spoke after a pause, during which the olive tints of his countenance had faded to ashen hues. "I regard those dreams, whose mock-halo has blinded you, in a different light. It is the wise man who rules the state,—it is the dreamer who dashes it to atoms. We have gone too far! I could not release you,—even if I would!"

Stephania breathed hard. Her hands were tightly clasped.

"It can bring glory to neither you, nor Rome," she said in a pleading voice. "Let him depart in peace, my lord, and I will thank you to my dying hour!"

"How know you he wishes to depart?"

"How know you he wishes to remain?"

"His destiny is Rome. Here he will live—and here he will die!" the Senator spoke with slow emphasis. "But we have not yet agreed upon the signal," he continued with cold and merciless voice. "After the departure of the envoys you will lead the King into his favourite haunts, the labyrinth of the Minotaurus, to the little temple of Neptune. There I will in person await him. When you see the gleam of spearpoints in the thickets, you will wave your kerchief with the cry: 'For Rome and Crescentius.' No harm shall befall the youth,—unless he resist. He shall have honourable conduct to the guest chamber, prepared for him,—below."

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

Stephania's bosom rose and fell in quick respiration.

"I am not accustomed to prefer a request and be denied," she said proudly, her face the pallor of death. "Is this your last word, my lord?"

Crescentius met her gaze unflinchingly.

"It is my last," he replied. "Yet one choice remains with you: You may betray the King,—or the Senator of Rome!"

He turned to go, but something whispered to him to stay. At that moment he despised himself for having imposed upon his wife a task, against which Stephania's loftier nature had rebelled and he inwardly cursed the hour which had ripened the seed and him, who had sown it. Gazing after Stephania's retreating form, all the love he bore her surged up into his heart as he cried her name.

Arrested by his voice, Stephania turned and paused for a moment swift as thought, but in that moment she seemed to read the very depths of his soul and the utter futility of further entreaty. Without a word she ascended the spiral stairway leading to the upper galleries and re-entered her own apartments, while with long and wistful gaze Crescentius followed the vanishing form of his wife.

And it seemed as if the Senator's prophecy was to be fulfilled. At the reading of the Electoral manifesto, Otto had been seized with an uncontrollable fit of rage. He had torn the document to shreds and cast its fragments at the feet of the Bavarian duke, who acted as spokesman for his colleagues, the dukes of Thuringia, Saxony and Westphalia. Neither the arguments of the Electoral envoys, nor the violent denunciations of Eckhardt, who aired his hatred of Rome in language never before heard in the presence of a sovereign, could stand before Benilo's eloquent pleading. On his knees the Chamberlain implored the King not to abandon Rome and his beloved Romans. Vainly the German dukes pointed to the dangers besetting the realm, vainly to the inadequate defences of the Eastern March. With a majesty far above his years, Otto declared his supreme will to make Rome the capital of the earth, and to restore the pristine majesty of the Holy Roman Empire. Rome was his destiny. Here he would live, and here he would die. Rome was pacified. He required no longer the presence of the army. Let Bavaria and Saxony defend their own boundaries as best they might; let the Count Palatine lead his veteran hosts across the Alps. He would remain. This his reply to the Electors.

On the eve of that eventful day the German dukes departed, while the Count Palatine proceeded to Tivoli, to prepare the great armament for their winter march across the Alps. It had come to pass as Crescentius had predicted. The die was cast. Rome, the Siren, had conquered.

In the night following these events, Rome in her various quarters presented a strange aspect of secret activity.

In the fortresses of the Cavalli and Caetani lights flitted to and fro through the gratings in the main court. Benilo, the Chamberlain, might be seen stealing from the postern gate. Towards the ruins of the Coliseum men whose dress bespoke them of the lowest rank, were seen creeping from lanes and alleys. From these ruins at a later hour, glided again the form of the Grand Chamberlain. Later yet,—when a gray light is breaking in the east, the gates of Rome, by St. John Lateran, are open. Benilo is conversing with the Roman guard. The mountains are dim with a mournful and chilling haze when Benilo enters the palace on the Aventine.

CHAPTER X

THE TEMPLE OF NEPTUNE

haken to the inmost depths of his soul by a storm of forebodings, hope, fear and passion, Otto had shaken himself free from the throng of flattering friends and courtiers and had sought the solitude of his own chamber. He had dismissed the envoys of the Electors with the unalterable reply that he would not return to his gloomy Saxon-land. Let the Saxon dukes defend the borders of the realm, let them keep Poles and Slavs in check. His own destiny was Rome. Here he would live, and here he would die. Deeply offended, the German envoys had departed. The consequences might be far-reaching indeed. Tearing off his accoutrements and all insignia of office and rank, Otto flung himself on his couch in solitary seclusion. All had been against him,—save Benilo. Benilo alone understood him. Benilo alone encouraged the young king to follow out his destiny. Benilo alone had pointed out that the earth might be governed from the ancient seat of empire without detriment to any of the nations of the Holy Roman Empire. Benilo alone had demonstrated the necessity of Otto's presence in his chosen capital, whose heterogeneous elements would obey no lesser authority.

Weary and torn by conflicting emotions he at last sank down before the image of Mary and prayed to the Mother of God to guide his steps in the dark wilderness in which he found himself entangled. Thus transported out of himself far beyond the vociferous pageant of that exhausting day, Otto gave himself with all the mystical fervour of his Hellenic nature to visions of the future.

Thus the evening approached. Long before the hour appointed he slowly bent his steps towards the little temple of Neptune, crowning the olive-clad summits of Mount Aventine and overlooking the vale of Egeria and the meandering course of the Tiber. The clouds above, beautiful with changing sunset tints, mottled the broken surface of the river with hues of bronze and purple between the leaves of the creeping water-plants, which clogged the movement of the stream. On the river-bank the rushes were starred with iris and ranunculus.

The sun was declining in the horizon. A solemn stillness, like the presage of some divine event, held the pulses of the universe. A soft rose crept into the shimmer of the water, cresting the summits of far off Soracté. The transient, many-tinted glories of the autumn sunset were reflected in opalescent lights on the waves of the Tiber, and swept the landscape in one dazzling glow of gold and amber, strangely blending with the gold and russet of the autumn foliage. The floating smell of flowers invisible hovered on the air; a mystic yearning seemed to pervade all nature in that chill, melancholy odour, that puts men in mind of death. The soft masses of leaves decayed caused a brushing sound under the feet of the lonely rambler.

Round him in the silent woods burnt the magnificent obsequies of departing summer.

Fire-flies moved through the embalmed air, like the torches of unseen angels. The late roses exhaled their mystic odour, and silently like dead butterflies, here and there a wan leaf dropped from the branches.

At every step the wood became more lonely. It was as untroubled by any sound as an abandoned cemetery. Birds there were few, the shade of the laurel-grove being too dense and no song of theirs was heard. A grasshopper began his shrill cry, but quickly ceased, as if startled by its own voice. Insects alone were humming faintly in a last slender ray of sunlight, but ventured not to quit its beam for the neighbouring gloom. Sometimes Otto trended his path along wider alleys bordered by titanic walls of weird cypress, casting dark shade as a moonless night. Here and there subterranean waters made the moss spongy. Streams ran everywhere, chill as melted snow, but silently, with no tinkling ripples, as if muted by the melancholy of the enchanted wood. Moss stifled the sound of the falling drops and they sank away like the tears of an unspoken love.

For a moment; Otto lingered among a tangle of elder-bushes. The oblique sun rays filtering through the dense laurel became almost lunar, as if seen through the smoke of a funeral torch.

Along the edge of the road goats were contentedly browsing and a rugged sun-burnt little lad with large black eyes was driving a flock of geese. Storm clouds lined with gold were rising in the North over the unseen Alps, and high up in the clear sky there burned a single star.

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

Onward he walked as in the memory of a dream.

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

"Fac me plagis vulnerari

Pac me cruce inebriari

Ob amorem Filii."

At last the Ionic marble columns, softly steeped in the warmth of departing day, came into sight. Silence and coolness encompassed him. The setting sun still cast his glimmer on the capitals of the columns whose fine, illumined scroll work, contrasted with the penumbral shadows of the interior, seemed soft and bright as tresses of gold.

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

"If you would know all—come! Come and I will tell you the secret which never yet I have uttered to mortal man."

In the departing light, veiled by the thick cypresses and pale as the moon-beams, just as in the Egerian wilderness in the whiteness of summer-lightnings, she put her face close to his, her face white as marble, with its scarlet lips, its witch-like eyes.

On they walked in silence, hand in hand.

On they walked along the verge of a precipice, where none have walked before, resisting the vertigo and the fatal attraction of the abyss. If they should prove unequal to the strain,—overstep the magic circle?

Stephania was pale and trembled. She smiled,—but the smile troubled him, he scarce knew why. He tried to think it was the melancholy, caused by the wild and stormy look of the sunset and the loud cawing of the hereditary rooks, which seemed to croak an everlasting farewell to life and hope in the oaks of the convent.

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

Must he renounce the near for the far-away, the ideal, whose embodiment she was, for the commonplace?

Slowly the sun sank to rest in a sea of crimson and gold, a fiery funeral of foliage and flowers.

A clock boomed from a neighbouring tower. The heavy measured clang vibrated long through the stillness, quivering In the air, like a warning knell of fate.

Softly she drew him into the dusk of the pagan temple, drew him down beside her on one of the scattered fragments of antiquity, a dog-eared God of black Syenite from Egypt, which had shared the fate of its Latin equals.

But he could not sit beside—her.

Abruptly he rose; standing before her, the passion of the long fight surged up in him. Stephania sat motionless, and for a time neither spoke.

At last Otto broke the silence. His voice was strained as if he were suffering some great pain.

"I have come!" he said. "I have cut every bridge between present and past! I am here.—Have you thought of my appeal?"

"Oh, why do you torture me?" she replied half sobbing, "I venture to ask for a delay, and you arraign me as though I stood at the bar of judgment."

"It is our day of judgment," he replied. "It is the day when life confronts us with our own deeds,—when we must answer for them, when we must justify them. For if we are but triflers, we cannot stand in the face either of heaven or of hell!"

He bent down and took her hands in his.

"Stephania," he said, "I too have doubted, I too have wavered:—give me but one word of assurance,—my love for you is a wound which no eternity can cure."

She broke from him, to hide her weeping.

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

"I would not forego the doom!—You alone are my light in this dark country of the world. Do not stifle the voice in your heart with reasons—"

"Reasons! Reasons!" she interrupted. "What does the heart know of reasons! Mine has long forgotten their pleadings—else, were I here?"

Something in her voice and gesture was like a lightning flash over a dark landscape. In an instant he saw the pit at his feet.

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

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

He rallied with a fault smile.

"A pretext for not heeding them."

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

"He has warned me against you!"

She turned very pale.

"And you heeded?"

"I am here, Stephania!"

The subtle perfume clinging to her gown mounted to his brain, choking back reason and resistance.

"Yet again I ask you, what is this to lead to? I am afraid of the future as a child of the dark!"

She held his hands tightly clasped.

"Oh!" she sobbed, "why will you torture me? I have borne much for our love's sake—but to answer you now is to relive it and I lack the strength."

He held her hands fast, his eyes in hers.

"No, Stephania," he said, "your strength never failed you when there was call on it, and our whole past calls on it now! Eckhardt tells me that the Romans hate me,—that they resent the love I bear them—oh, if it were true!"

Stephania gazed at him with wide astonished eyes.

"Ah! It is this then," she said with a sigh of relief. "A moment's thought must show you what passions are here at work. You must rise above such fears. As for us,—no one can judge between us, but ourselves. Shake off these dread fancies! There lies but one goal before us. You pointed the way to it once. Surely you would not hold me back from it now?"

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

She saw the conflict, which raged within him, the instinct to break away from her, who could never more be his own. She saw the fear which bound him to her,—she saw the great love he bore her, and she knew that he was hers soul and body, her instrument, her toy,—her lover if she so willed.

He spoke to her of his childhood in the bleak northern forests; of the black pines of Thuringia, of the snow-drifts, which froze his heart; of the sad sea horizons brooding infinitely away; of the gloomy abbey of Merséburg, in the Saxon-land, where the great Emperor Otto, his grandsire, was sleeping towards the day of resurrection, where under the abbot's guidance he had first been initiated into the magic of a sunnier clime. He spoke to her of his Greek mother, the Empress Theophano, whose great beauty was only rivalled by her own, and of that eventful night, when he descended into the crypts of Aix-la-Chapelle and opened the tomb of Charlemagne, then dead almost two hundred years. He told her how he had fought against this mad, unreasoning love, which had at first sight of her crept into his heart, urging naught in palliation of his offence, but like a flagellant laying bare his tortured flesh to a self-inflicted scourge. He begged her to decide for him, to guide him, lonely antagonist of destiny—dared he ask for more? She was the wife of the Senator of Rome.

As he ceased speaking, Otto covered his face with his hands, but Stephania drew them down and held them firmly in her own. Truly, if it was victory to accomplish the end, by drawing out a loving, confiding heart, the victory was with the vanquished. And with the memory of the compact she had sealed a wondrous pity flashed through the woman's soul, a mighty longing, to lift the son of the Greek Princess up into joyous peace! No thought of evil marred her pure desire,—alas! She knew not at that moment, that even in that pity lay his direst snare, and hers.

The decisive moment was at hand. In the thickets before the temple her eye discerned the gleam of spear-points. For a moment a violent tremor passed through her body. She had hardly strength sufficient to maintain her presence of mind, and her face was pale as that of a corpse.

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

It was some time ere she felt sufficiently composed to speak. Her throat was dry and she seemed to choke.

Otto remarked her discomfiture, far from guessing its cause.

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

Quick as lightning she had arisen, holding him back.

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

And he obeyed.

Stephania closed her eyes as if to exclude the sight of the spear-points.

"Otto," she said softly, after a pause, for the first time calling him by his name, "I fear there is one great lesson you have never learned."

"And what is this lesson?"

"That, what you are doing for the Romans might also be done for you! Is there no heart to share your sorrow, to help you bear the pain of disappointment, which must come to you sooner or later? You told me, you had never loved before we met—"

He nodded assent.

"Never—Never!"

"Ah! Then you do not know. You seek for light, where the sun can never shine! Striving for the highest ideals of mankind we can rise from the black depths of doubt but by one ladder,—that of a woman's love!"

Again the dreadful doubt assailed him.

"If you mean—that,—oh, do not speak of it, Stephania! The wound is already past healing."

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

"And yet I must,—here—and to you."

"No—no—no!" he muttered helplessly and turned away. The words of Eckhardt rushed and roared through his memory: "Once you are hers,—no human power can save you from the abyss."

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

Stephania relinquished not her victim. He must be hers, body and soul, ere she shrieked the fatal word.—The warm blood hurtling through her veins quenched the last pitying spark.

"Ah!" she said with a sigh. "You have never known the tenderness of a woman's smile,—the touch of a woman's hand,—her soft caress,—the sound of her voice,—that haunts you everywhere,—waking,—in your dreams—"

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

"You have never known the ear that listens for your footsteps,—the lips that meet your own in a long, passionate kiss,—the kiss that thrills—and burns—and maddens—"

"Stephania—in mercy—cease!"

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

"You are not like other men—Otto! Will you always live so lonely,—so companionless,—with no one to love you with that lasting love, for which your whole soul cries out?"

Shivering he raised his arms as if to shut the sight of her from his dazzled gaze. Again, though fainter, Eckhardt's terrible warning knocked at the gates of his memory. But her purring voice with its low melodious roll, wooed his listening heart till the doors of reason tottered on their hinges. And the end—what would be the end?

"Tell me no more," he gasped, "tell me no more! I cannot listen! I dare not listen! You will destroy me! You will destroy us both!"

Her lips parted in a smile,—that fateful smile, which caused his soul to quake. Her fine nostrils quivered, as she bent towards him.

"You cannot?" she said. "You dare not? Will you pass the cup untasted, the cup that brims with the crimson joy of love? Is there none in all the world to take you by the hand,—to lead you home?"

With a cry half inarticulate he sprang toward her,—his fierce words tumbling from delirious lips:

"Yes,—there is one,—there is one,—one who could lift me up till my soul should sing in heavenly bliss,—one who could bring to me forgetfulness and peace,—one who could change my state of exalted loneliness to a delirium of ecstasy,—one who could lead me, wherever she would—could I but lay my head on her breast,—touch her lips,—call her mine—"

Stephania stretched out her white, bare arms that made him dizzy. He stood before her quivering with hands pressed tightly against his throbbing temples. One moment only.—Half risen from her seat, her eye on the gleaming spear-points in the thicket, she seemed to crouch towards him like some beautiful animal, then a half choked out cry broke from his lips, as their eyes looked hungrily into each others, and they were clasped in a tight embrace. Stephania's arms encircled Otto's neck and she pressed her lips on his in a long, fervid kiss, which thrilled the youth to the marrow of his bone.

At that moment a curtain of matted vines, which divided the vestibule of the little temple from its inner chambers was half pushed aside by a massive arm, wrapped with scales of linked mail. Standing behind them, Crescentius witnessed the embrace and withdrew without a word.

Was Stephania not overacting her part?

He waited for the signal.

No signal came.

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

Johannes Crescentius had lost the love of his wife.

After a time the spear-points disappeared.

The Senator of Rome saw his own danger and the forces arrayed against him. He was no longer dealing with statecraft. The weapon had been turned. With a smothered outcry of anguish he slowly retraced his steps.

Neither had seen the silent witness of their embrace.

Silence had ensued in the temple.

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

After a time Otto stumbled blindly into the open. Stephania remained alone in rigid silence.

In frozen horror she stared into the dusk.

"The game is finished,—I have won,—oh, God forgive me—God forgive me!" she moaned. "Otto ... Otto ... Otto ..."

* * * * *

"If you would know all,—come at midnight to the churchyard near Ponte Sisto," whispered a voice close by his side, as Crescentius staggered towards the Aelian bridge.

He felt a hand upon his shoulder, turned, and saw, like some ill-omened ghost in the wintry twilight, a lean pale face staring into his own.

In the darkness, under the dense shadows of the cypress-trees he could not distinguish the features of his companion, who wore the habit of a monk.

But when Crescentius turned to reply, he was alone.

"Christ too prayed a human prayer for a miracle: Father, let this cup pass from me!" he muttered, continuing upon his way.

With eyes on the ground he strode along the narrow walk, skirting the Tiber, in whose turbid waves no stars were reflected. And scarce consciously he repeated to himself:

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

He passed the bridge and entered the mausoleum of the Flavian emperor. Rapidly he ascended to his own chamber.

The candle was burning low.

Up and down he paced in the endeavour to order his thoughts. But no order would come into the chaotic confusion of his mind.

What was the dominion of Rome to him now?

What the dominion of the Universe?

What devil in human shape had counselled the act in the seeds of which slumbered his own destruction?

The flame of the dying candle flickered and grew dim.

Had Stephania returned?

He heard no steps, no sound in her chamber.

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

How he hated that boy, who after wresting from him the dominion of the city, had stolen from him the love of his wife!

Stolen? Had it not been thrust upon him? What mortal could have resisted the temptation? He would die—thus it was written in the stars;—but Stephania would weep for him—

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

The candle flared up for the last time, lighting up the gloom. Then it sank down and went out.

Crescentius was alone in the darkness.

CHAPTER XI

THE INCANTATION

t was near the hour of midnight when a figure, muffled and concealed in an ample mantle left Castel San Angelo. The guards on duty did not challenge it and after crossing the Aelian bridge, it traversed the deserted thoroughfares until it reached the Flaminian way, which it entered. Avoiding the foot-path near the river, the figure moved stealthily along the farther side of the road, which, as far as could be discerned by the glimpses of the moon which occasionally shone forth from a bank of heavy clouds, was deserted. A few sounds arose from the banks of the river and there was now and then a splash in the water or a distant cry betokening some passing craft. Otherwise profound silence reigned. The low structures and wharfs on the opposite bank could be but imperfectly discerned, but the moonlight fell clear upon the mausoleum of Augustus and the adjacent church of St. Eufemia. The same glimmer also ran like a silver-belt across the stream and revealed the gloomy walls of the Septizonium. The world of habitations beyond this melancholy stronghold was buried in darkness.

After crossing Ponte Sisto the muffled rambler entered a churchyard, which seemed to have been abandoned for ages. The moon was now shining brightly and silvered the massive square watchtowers, the battlements, and pinnacles with gorgeous tracery. Crescentius had hardly set foot on the moss-grown path, when two individuals wrapped in dark, flowing mantles, whose manner was as mysterious as their appearance, glided stealthily past him.

They seemed not to have noticed his presence but pursued their way through the churchyard, creeping beneath the shadow of a wall in the direction of some low structure, which appeared to be a charnel-house situated at its north-western extremity. Before this building grew a black and stunted yew-tree. Arrived at it, they paused to see whether they were observed. They did not notice the unbidden visitor, who had concealed himself behind a buttress. One of the two individuals who seemed bent by great age then unlocked the door of the charnel-house and brought out a pick-axe and a spade. Then both men proceeded some little distance from the building and began to shovel out the mould from a grass-grown grave.

Determined to watch their proceeding, Crescentius crept towards the yew-tree, behind which he ensconced himself. The bent and decrepit one of the two meanwhile continued to ply his spade with a vigour that seemed incomprehensible in one so far stricken in years and of such infirm appearance. At length he paused, and kneeling within the shallow grave endeavoured to drag something from it. His assistant, apparently younger and possessed of greater vigour, knelt to lend his aid. After some exertion they drew forth the corpse of a woman which had been interred without a coffin and apparently in the habiliments worn during life. Then the two men raised the corpse, and conveyed it to the charnel-house. After having done so, one of them returned to the grave for the lantern and, upon returning, entered the building and closed and fastened the door behind him.

Crescentius had chosen the moment when one of the two individuals left the lone house, to enter unobserved and to conceal himself in the shadows. What he had witnessed, had exercised a terrible fascination over him, and he was determined to see to an end the devilish rites about to be performed by the personage, in quest of whom he had come. The chamber in which he found himself was in perfect keeping with the horrible ceremonial about to be performed. In one corner lay a mouldering heap of skulls, bones and other fragments of mortality; in the other a pile of broken coffins, emptied of their tenants and reared on end. But what chiefly attracted his attention, was a ghastly collection of human limbs blackened with pitch, girded round with iron hoops and hung like meat in a shamble against the wall. There were two heads, and although the features were scarcely distinguishable owing to the liquid in which they had been immersed, they still retained a terrible expression of agony. These were the quarters of two priests recently executed for conspiracy against the Pontiff, which had been left there pending their final disposition. The implements of execution were scattered about and mixed with the tools of the sexton, while in the centre of the room stood a large wooden frame supported by rafters. On this frame, bespattered with blood and besmeared with pitch, the body was now placed. This done, the one who seemed to be the moving spirit of the two, placed the lantern beside it, and as the light fell upon its livid features, sullied with earth, and exhibiting traces of decay, Crescentius was so appalled by the sight, that he revealed his presence by a half suppressed outcry. Seeing the futility of further concealment, he stepped into the light of the lantern and was about to speak, when he heard the older address his assistant, neither of whom evinced the least surprise at his presence, while he pointed toward him:

"Look! It is the very face! The bronzed and strongly marked features,—the fierce gray eye—the iron frame of the figure we beheld in the show-stone! Thus he looked, as we tracked his perilous course."

"You know me then?" asked the intruder uneasily.

"You are the Senator of Rome!"

"You spoke of my perilous course! How have you learned this?"

"By the art that reveals all things! And in proof that your thoughts are known to me, I will tell you the inquiry you would make before it is uttered. You came here to learn whether the enterprise in which you are engaged will succeed."

"Such was my intent," replied Crescentius. "From the reports about you, I will freely admit, I regarded you as an impostor! Now I am convinced that you are skilled in the occult science and would fain consult you on the future. What is the meaning of this?" he continued pointing to the corpse before him.

"I expected you!" was the conjurer's laconic reply.

"How is that possible?" exclaimed Crescentius. "It is only within the hour, that I conceived the thought,—and only the events of this evening prompted it."

"I know all!" replied Dom Sabbat. "Yet I would caution you: beware, how you pry into the future. You may repent of your rashness, when it is too late."

"I have no fear! Let me know the worst!" replied Crescentius.

The conjurer pointed to the corpse.

"That carcass having been placed in the ground without the holy rites of burial, I have power over it. As the witch of Endor called up Samuel, as is recorded in Holy Writ,—as Erichtho raised up a corpse, to reveal to Sextus Pompejus the event of the Pharsalian war,—as the dead maid was brought back to life by Appollonius of Thyana,—so I, by certain powerful incantations will lure the soul of this corpse for a short space into its former abode, and compel it to answer my questions. Dare you be present at the ceremony?"

"I dare!" replied the Senator of Rome.

"So it be!" replied Dom Sabbat. "You will need all your courage!" and he extinguished the light.

An awful silence ensued in the charnel-house, broken only by a low murmur from the conjurer who appeared to be reciting an incantation. As he proceeded, his tones became louder and his voice that of command. Suddenly he paused and seemed to await a response. But as none was made, greatly to the disappointment of Crescentius, whose curiosity, despite his fears, was raised to the highest pitch, cried:

"Blood is wanting to complete the charm!"

"If that be all, I will speedily supply the deficiency," replied the Senator, bared his left arm and, drawing his poniard, pricked it slightly with the point of the weapon.

"I bleed now!" he cried.

"Sprinkle the corpse with the blood," commanded Dom Sabbat.

"The blood is flowing upon it!" replied Crescentius with a shudder.

Upon this the conjurer began to mutter an incantation in a louder and more authoritative tone than before. His assistant added his voice, and both joined in a sort of chorus, but in a jargon entirely unintelligible to the Senator.

Suddenly a blue flame appeared above their heads, and slowly descending, settled upon the brow of the corpse, lighting up the sunken cavities of the eyes and the discoloured and distorted features.

"She moves! She moves!" shouted the Senator frantically. "She moves! She is alive."

"Be silent!" cried Dom Sabbat, "else mischief may ensue!"

And again he started his incantation.

"Down on your knees!" he exclaimed at length with terrible voice. "The spirit is at hand."

There was a rushing sound and a stream of white, dazzling light shot down upon the corpse, which emitted a hollow groan. In obedience to Dom Sabbat's demand Crescentius had prostrated himself on the ground, but he kept his gaze steadily fixed on the body, which, to his infinite amazement, slowly arose until it stood erect upon the frame. There it remained perfectly motionless, with the arms close to the sides and the habiliments torn and dishevelled. The blue light still retained its position upon the brow and communicated a horrible glimmer to the features. The spectacle was so dreadful, that Crescentius would have averted his eyes, but he was unable to do so. The conjurer and his familiar meanwhile continued their invocations, until, as it seemed to the Senator, the lips of the corpse moved and a voice of despair exclaimed: "Why have you called me?"

"To question you about the future!" replied Dom Sabbat rising.

"Speak and I will answer," replied the corpse.

"Ask her,—but be brief;—her time is short," said Dom Sabbat, addressing the Senator. "Only as long as that flame burns, have I power over her!"

"What is her name?" questioned the Senator.

"Marozia!"

The Senator's hand went to his forehead; he tottered and almost fell. But he caught himself.

"Spirit of Marozia," he cried, "if indeed thou standest before me, and some demon has not entered thy frame to delude me,—by all that is holy, and by every blessed saint do I adjure thee to tell me, whether the scheme, on which I am now engaged for the glory of Rome, will prosper?"

"Thou art mistaken, Johannes Crescentius," returned the corpse. "Thy scheme is not for the glory of Rome!"

"I will not pause to argue this point," continued the Senator. "Will the end be successful?"

"The end will be death," replied the corpse.

"To the King—or to myself?"

"To both!"

"Ha!" ejaculated Crescentius, breathing hard. "To both!"

"Proceed if you have more to ask,—the flame is expiring," cried the conjurer.

"And—Stephania?" But he could not utter the question. He felt like one choking.

But before the question was formed, the light vanished and a heavy sound was heard, as of the body falling on the frame.

"It is over!" said Dom Sabbat

"Can you not summon her again?" asked Crescentius, in a tone of deep disappointment. "I must know that other."

"Impossible," replied the conjurer. "The spirit has flown and cannot be recalled. We must commit the body to the earth!"

"My curiosity is excited,—not satisfied," said the Senator. "Would it were to occur again!"

"Thus it is ever," replied Dom Sabbat. "We seek to know that which is forbidden, and quench our thirst at a fount, which but inflames our curiosity the more. You have embarked on a perilous enterprise;—be warned, Senator of Rome! If you continue to pursue it, it will lead you to perdition."

"I cannot retreat," replied Crescentius. "And I would not, if I could. Death to both of us:—this at least is atonement!"

"I warn you again,—if you persist, you are lost!"

"Impossible,—I cannot retreat;—I could not, if I would! By no sophistry can I clear my conscience of the ties imposed upon it. I have sworn never to desist from the execution of this scheme, never—never! And so resolved am I, that if I stood alone in this very hour—I would go on."

"You stand alone!"

No one knew whence the voice had come. The three stood appalled.

A deep groan issued from the corpse.

"For the last time,—be warned!" expostulated Dom Sabbat.

"Come forth!" cried Crescentius rushing towards the door. "This place stifles me!" And he unbolted the door and threw it wide open, stepping outside.

The moon was shining brightly from a deep blue azure. Before him stood the old church of St. Damian bathed in the moonlight. The Senator gazed abstractedly at the venerable structure, then he re-entered the charnel-house, where he found the conjurer and his companion employed in placing the body of the excommunicated denizen of Castel San Angelo into a coffin, which they had taken from a pile in the corner. He immediately proffered his assistance and in a short space the task was completed. The coffin was then borne toward the grave, at the edge of which it was laid, while the Dom Sabbat mumbled a strange Requiem over the departed.

This ended, it was laid into its shallow resting place, and speedily covered with earth.

When all was ready for their departure, Dom Sabbat turned to the Senator of Rome, bidding him farewell. Declining the proffered gold, he observed:

"If you are wise, my lord, you will profit by the awful warning you have this night received."

"Who are you?" the Senator questioned abruptly, trying to peer through the cowl which the adept of the black arts had drawn over his face, "since the devils obey your beck?"

The conjurer laughed a soundless laugh.

"Of dominion over devils I am innocent—since I rule no men!"

At the entrance of the churchyard, Crescentius parted from the conjurer and his associate, about whose personality he had not troubled himself, and returned in deep rumination to Castel San Angelo.

No sooner had the Senator of Rome departed, than the conjurer's familiar tore the trappings from his person and stood revealed to his companion as Benilo, the Chamberlain.

"Dog! Liar! Impostor," he hissed into Dom Sabbat's face, while kicking and buffeting him. "Marozia has been dead some fifty years. How dare you perpetrate this monstrous fraud? Was it this I bade you tell the Senator of Rome?"

Dom Sabbat cringed before the blows and the flaming madness in the Chamberlain's eyes. Folding his arms over his chest and bending low he replied with feigned contrition:

"It was not for me to compel the spirit's answer! And as for the corpse, 'twas Marozia's. Thus read you the devil's favour. Until blessed by the holy rite, the body cannot return to its native dust."

"Then it was Marozia's spirit we beheld?" Benilo queried with a shudder, as they left the churchyard.

"Marozia's spirit," replied Dom Sabbat. "Yet who would raise a fabric on the memory of a lie?"

CHAPTER XII

THE HERMITAGE OF NILUS

tephania's sleep had been broken and restless. She tossed and turned in her pillows and pushed back the hair from her fevered cheeks and throbbing temples in vain. It was weary work, to lie gazing with eyes wide open at the flickering shadows cast by the night-lamp on the opposite wall. It was still less productive of sleep to shut them tight and to abandon herself to the visions thus evoked, which stood out in life-like colours and refused to be dispelled.

Do what she would to forget him, to conjure up some other object in her soul, there stood the son of Theophano, towering like a demi-god over the mean, effeminate throng of her countrymen. Her whole being had changed in the brief space of time, since first they had met face to face. Then the woman's heart, filled with implacable hatred of that imperial phantom, which had twice wrested the dominion of Rome from the Senator's iron grasp, filled with hatred of the unwelcome intruder, had given one great bound for joy at the certainty that he was hers,—hers to deal with according to her desire,—that he had not withstood the vertigo of her fateful beauty. With the first kiss she had imprinted on his lips, she had dedicated him to the Erynnies,—it was not enough to vanquish, she must break his heart. Thus only would her victory be complete.

What a terrible change had come over her now! All she possessed, all she called her own, she would gladly have given to undo what she had done. For the first time, as with the lightning's glare, the terrible chasm was revealed to her, at the brink of which she stood. Strange irony of fate! Slowly but surely she had felt the hatred of Otto vanish from her heart. He had bared his own before her, she had penetrated the remotest depths of his soul. She had read him as an open book. And as she revolved in her own mind the sordid aspirations of those she called her countrymen, the promptings of tyrants and oppressors,—thrown in the scales against the pure and lofty ideals of the King,—a flush of shame drove the pallor from her cheeks and caused hot tears of remorse to well up from the depths of her eyes.

For the first time the whole enormity of what she had done, of the scheme to which she had lent herself, flashed upon her, and with it a wave of hot resentment rushed through her heart. Her own blind hate and the ever-present consciousness of the low estate to which the one-time powerful house of Crescentius had fallen, had prompted her to accept the trust, to commit the deed for which she despised herself. Would the youth, whom she was to lead the sure way to perdition, have chosen such means to attain his ends? And what would he say to her at that fatal moment, when all his illusions would be shattered to atoms, his dreams destroyed and his heart broken? Would he not curse her for ever having crossed his path? Would he not tear the memory of the woman from his heart, who had trifled with its most sacred heavings? He would die, but she! She must live—live beside the man for whom she had sinned, for whose personal ends she had spun this gigantic web of deception. Otto would die:—he would not survive the shock of the revelation. His sensitive, finely-strung temperament was not proof against such unprecedented treachery. What the Senator's shafts and catapults had failed to achieve,—the Senator's wife would have accomplished! But the glory of the deed? "Gloria Victis," he had said to her when she pointed the chances of defeat. "Gloria Victis"—and she must live!

Otto loved her;—with a love so passionate and enduring that even death would mock at separation.—They would belong to each other ever after. It was not theirs to choose. It seemed to her as if they had been destined for each other from the begin of time, as if their souls had been one, even before their birth. And all the trust reposed in her, all the love given to her—how was she about to requite them? Were her countrymen worthy the terrible sacrifice? Was Crescentius, her husband? Had his rule ennobled him? Had his rule ennobled the Romans? Were the motives not purely personal?

She knew she had gone too far to recede. And even if she would, nothing could now save the German King. The avalanche which had been started could not be stopped. The forces arrayed against Teutonic rule now defied the control of him who had evoked them. How could she save the King?

Salvation for him lay only in immediate flight from Rome! The very thought was madness. He would never consent. Not all his love for her could prompt a deed of cowardice. He would remain and perish,—and his blood would be charged to her account in the book of final judgment.

How long were these dreadful hours! They seemed never ending like eternity. A moan broke from Stephania's lips. She hid her burning face in her white arms. Oh, the misery of this fatal love! There was no resisting it, there was no renouncing it;—ever present in her soul, omnipotent in her heart, it would not even cease with death; yea, perhaps this was but the beginning.—Would she survive the terrible hour of the final trial, when, a second Delilah, she called the Philistines down upon her trusting foe? She moaned and tossed as in the agues of a fever and only towards the gray dawn of morning she fell into a fitful slumber.

The preparations for his last rebellion against German rule had kept the Senator of Rome within the walls of the formidable keep, which since the days of Vitiges, the Goth, had defied every assault, no matter who the assailant. Crescentius had succeeded in repairing the breaches in the walls and in strengthening the defences in a manner, which would cause every attempt to carry the mausoleum by storm to appear an undertaking as mad as it was hopeless. He had augmented his Roman garrison, swelled by the men-at-arms of the Roman barons pledged to his support, by Greek auxiliaries, drawn from Torre del Grecco, and under his own personal supervision the final preparations were being pushed to a close. His activity was so strenuous that he appeared to be in the vaults and the upper galleries of Castel San Angelo at the same time. He had been seized with a restlessness which did not permit him to remain long on any one spot. But the terrible misgivings which filled his heart with drear forebodings, which, now it was too late to recede, caused him to tremble before the final issue, drove the Senator of Rome like a madman through the corridors of the huge mausoleum. Had he in truth lost the love of his wife? Then indeed was the victory of the son of Theophano complete. He had robbed him of all, but life—a life whose last spark should ignite the funeral torches for the King and,—if it must be—for Rome.

The day was fading fast, when Crescentius mounted the stairs which led to Stephania's apartments. His heart was heavy with fear. This hour must set matters right between them;—in this hour he must know the worst,—-and from her own lips. She would not fail him at the final issue, of that, as he knew her proud spirit, he was convinced. But what availed that final issue, if he had lost the one jewel in his crown, without which the crown itself was idle mockery?

Stephania's apartments were deserted. Where was his wife? She never used to leave the Castello without informing him of the goal of her journey. Times were uncertain and the precaution well justified. With loud voice the Senator of Rome called for Stephania's tirewoman. Receiving no immediate reply, a terrible thought rushed through his head. Perhaps she was even now with him,—with Otto! In its undiminished vividness the scene at the Neptune temple arose before him. What availed it to rave and to moan and to shriek? Was it not his own doing,—rather the counsel of one who perhaps rejoiced in his discomfiture? Crescentius' hand went to his head. Was such black treachery conceivable? Could Benilo,—-but no! Not even the fiend incarnate would hatch out such a plot, tossing on a burning pillow of anguish in sleepless midnight.

He was about to retrace his steps below, when the individual desired, Stephania's tirewoman, appeared and informed the Senator that her mistress had but just left, to seek an interview with her confessor. A momentary sigh of relief came from the lips of Crescentius. His fears had perhaps been groundless. Still he felt the imperative necessity to obtain proof positive of her innocence or guilt. Thus only could his soul find rest.

Stephania had gone to her confessor. Fate itself would never again throw such an opportunity in his way. And he made such good speed, that, when he came within sight of the ruins of the baths of Caracalla, he perceived by the advancing torches, which the guards accompanying her litter carried, that she had not yet reached her destination.

Approaching closer, he saw them halt near the ruins and in a few moments a woman, wrapt in a dark mantilla, stepped from her litter, received by a bubbling, gesticulating monk, in whom the Senator immediately recognized Fra Biccocco, the companion of Nilus. Escorted by him, she walked hastily into the ruins, and was soon lost to sight in their intricate windings.

Recalling the observations he had made on a previous visit, Crescentius wound his way from the rear to the same point, so that none of Stephania's retinue, who were laughing and chatting among themselves, discerned him or even discovered his presence. Then he rapidly threaded his way to the chamber through which Fra Biccocco and Stephania had just passed, boldly followed them into the clearing, from which Nilus' cell was reached, and concealed himself in the long grass until Biccocco returned from the hermit's cell. Then he approached the monk's hermitage and took up his post of observation in the shadows, out of sight but able to hear every word which would be exchanged between Nilus and his confessor.

The monk of Gaëta had been far from anticipating a visitor at this late hour. Seated at his stone table, he had been reading some illuminated manuscript, when he suddenly laid down the scroll and listened. The perfect stillness of the deserted Aventine permitted some breathings of remote music from the distant groves of Theodora to strike his ear, and after listening for a time, he arose and traversed his cell with rapid steps. He was about to reseat himself and to continue his disquisition by the pale, flickering light of the candle burning before a crucifix, when voices were audible and Biccocco entered, having scarcely time to announce Stephania, ere she followed.

"Good even, Father,—be not startled,—I was returning from my gardens of Egeria and I have brought your altar some of its choicest flowers," she said in a hushed and timid voice, while at the same time she offered the monk some beautiful white roses of a late bloom. "Moreover, I would speak a few words alone with you,—alone with you,—Father Biccocco,—with your permission."

Biccocco, looking at her, as she threw back her mantle from her shoulders, respectfully prepared to obey, almost wondering that there could be on earth anything so wondrously beautiful as this woman.

"Biccocco, I command thee, stay!" exclaimed Nilus starting up. "I would say—nay, daughter—is it thou? I knew not at first,—my sight is dim—Biccocco, let no one trouble me—but tears? What ails our gentle penitent? Has she forgotten a whole string of Aves? Or what heavier offence? It was but yesterday I counselled thee,—but a few hours are so much to a woman.—Wherefore glow thy cheeks with the fires of shame? Biccocco—leave us!"

"Father, I have sinned—yea, grievously sinned in these few hours, since I have seen thee," said Stephania, when the restraint of Biccocco's presence was removed, little suspecting what listener had succeeded. "I have sinned and I repent,—but even in my offence lies my greatest chastisement."

"Art well assured, that it is remorse, and not regret?" replied the hermit of Gaëta. "Thy sex often mistakes one for the other. But what is the matter? Surely it might not prevent thee from taking thy needful rest, might bide the light of day, to be told,—to be listened to,—yet—thou art strangely pale!"

"I have been mad, father, crazed,—I know not what I have done! I dare not look upon thee, and tell thee! Let me arrange my flowers in thy chalice, while I speak," replied Stephania, hiding her face in the fragrant bundle.

"Not so!" replied the monk. "Eye and gesture often confess more than the apologizing lip! Kneel in thy wonted place! No other attitude becomes thy dignity or mine;—for either thou kneelest to the servant of God or thou debasest thyself before the brother of man!"

Stephania complied instantly, and Nilus, throwing himself back in his chair, fixed his eyes on the crucifix before him, without even glancing at the penitent.

"Father—you had warned me of all the ills that would befall," she began, almost inaudibly, "but I longed to see him at my feet,—and more,—much more!"

"What is all this?" said the monk turning very pale and glancing at his fair penitent with a degree of fierceness mingled with surprise.

"Ah! You know not what a woman feels,—when—when—" She paused, breathing hard.

"Hast thou then committed a deadly sin? Some dark adultery of the soul?" exclaimed Nilus. "Nay, daughter," he continued, as she shrank within herself at his words, "I speak too harshly now! But what more hast to say? Time wears—and this soft cheek should be upon the down, or its sweetness will not bloom as freshly as some of its rivals, at dawn. Thou see'st this hermitage, from which thou wouldst lure me, yields some recollections to brighten its desolation and gloom. What is it thou wouldst say?"

Stephania stared for a moment into the monk's face, at a loss to grasp his meaning. At last she stammered.

"Yet—I but intended to win him to—some silly tryst,—wherein I intended to deride his boyish passions."

"And he refused thy lures and thou art vexed to have escaped perdition?" said the monk, more mildly.

"Nay—for he came!"

"He came! Jest not in a matter like this! He came? Thou knowest of all mankind I have reasons to wish this youth well,—this one at least!" said Nilus somewhat incoherently.

"He came,—once,—twice,—many times! He came, I say, and—-"

"What of him? Thou hast not had him harmed for trusting his enemy?"

Stephania's cheek took the hues of marble.

"Harmed? I would rather perish myself than that he should come to harm."

Nilus was silent for a moment or two, and Stephania, as if to take courage, timidly took his hand, holding it between her own.

"I must needs avow my whole offence," she stammered, "he came,—and—"

"Why dost pause, daughter?" questioned the monk, with penetrating look.

"Nay—but hear me!" continued Stephania. "I first intended but to win his confidence,—then,—having drawn him out—expose him to the just laughter of my court."

"A most womanly deed! But where did this meeting take place?"

"In the Grottos of Egeria!"

"In the Grottos of Egeria!" the monk repeated aghast.

"And then," she continued with a great sadness in her tone, "I never felt so strangely mad,—I would have him share some offence, to justify the clamour I had provided, scarcely I know how to believe it now myself.—I did to his lips,—what I now do to your hand."