She turned to leave the room. Myxila, hesitating, was already following her to the door.
"What for?" roared the emperor. "What's the reason of that? I have something more to say to Myxila."
The empress gave the emperor a look as cold as ice:
"It is my express wish, sir, that Count Myxila should go with me," she said, in the same trembling voice. "I think your majesty needs solitude. Your majesty is saying things which a father must not even think and which a sovereign must certainly not say in the presence of a subject, not even in that of one of his highest subjects...."
The emperor tried to interrupt her.
"Your majesty," continued the empress, with a haughty tremor, cutting the words from him with her icy-cold, trembling voice as though with a knife, "is saying these things of the future Emperor of Lipara ... and I wishnosubject, not even Count Myxila, to hear such things; and, moreover, your majesty is saying these things ofmy son: therefore I do not wish to hear them myself, sir! Excellency, I request you once more to come with me."
"Go then!" shouted the emperor, like a madman. "Go, both of you: yes, leave me alone, leave me alone!"
He walked furiously up and down, flung the chairs one against the other, roared like an angry caged lion. He took a bronze statue from a bracket in front of a tall mirror that rose to the ceiling in gilt arabesques:
"There then!" he lashed out, while his passion seemed to seethe mistily in his bewildered brain, to shoot red lightning-flashes from his bloodshot eyes, to drive him mad because of his impotence against the senseless fate and logic of circumstance.
Like an athlete he brandished the heavy statue through the air; like a child he hurled it at the great mirror, which fell clattering in a flicker of shreds.
The empress and Myxila had left the room.
The ordinary court-life continued; the empress' first drawing-room took place. The reception-rooms leading to the great presence-chamber were lit up, though it was day-time; the ladies entered, handed their cards to the grand chamberlain, signed their names and waited until their titles were called out by the masters of ceremonies. They stood in low-necked dresses; the long white veils fell in misty folds of gauze from the feathers and jewelled tiaras. It was the first display of the new costumes of the season, the fashion which had sprung into life and now moved and had its being; but the crowded rooms seemed but the antechambers of that display and the upgathered trains gave an impression of preparation for the solemn second, the momentary appearance before her majesty.
The Duchess of Yemena was waiting, her train also thrown over her arm, with the two marchionesses her stepdaughters, whom she was about to present to the empress, when she saw Dutri, bowing, apologizing, twisting through the expectant ladies, to make way for himself through the crowded room:
"Dutri," she beckoned, as he did not seem to perceive her.
He reached her after some difficulty, bowed, paid his compliments to the little marchionesses. They stood with stiff little faces, frightened, round eyes and tight-closed mouths; and the lines of their girlish figures displayed the shyness of novices. With an awkward grace, they kept arranging their heavy court-trains over their arms. They just smiled at Dutri's words; then they looked stiff again, compared the other ladies' dresses with their own.
"Dutri," whispered the duchess, "how is the prince?"
"Just the same," the equerry whispered in reply. "Terribly melancholy...."
"Dutri," she murmured, sinking her voice still lower, "would there be no chance for me to see him?"
Dutri started in dismay:
"How do you mean, Alexa? When?"
"Presently, after the drawing-room...."
"But that is impossible, Alexa! The prince sees no one but their majesties and the princess; he talks to nobody, not even to his chamberlains, not even to us...."
"Dutri," she insisted, with her hand on his arm, "do your best. Help me. Ask for an interview for me. If you help me ... I will help you too...."
He looked at her expectantly.
"What do you think of Hélène?" she asked.
"I think Eleonore prettier," he smiled.
"Well, come to us oftener, to my special days; we never see anything of you. I will prepare the duke...."
She dangled the rich match before his eyes: he blinked them, as he continued to look at her and smile.
"But then you must help me!" she continued, with a gentle threat.
"I will do my best, Alexa, but I can promise nothing," he just had time to reply. "Wait for me after the drawing-room, in one of the other rooms," he whispered, accompanying her for a few steps.
All this time the titles were being cried, ceremoniously, slowly; the ladies moved on, dropped their trains, blossomed out.
"Her excellency the Duchess of Yemena, Countess of Vaza; their excellencies the Marchionesses of Yemena...."
The duchess moved on, the girls followed her, crimson, with beating hearts. They passed through a long gallery, dropping their trains; at the door of the presence-room, before they entered, stood flunkeys who spread out the heavy court-mantles.
"Her excellency the Duchess of ..."
The titles rang out for the second time, this time through the presence-chamber and with a sound of greater reverence, because they echoed in the listening ears of welcoming majesty.
The duchess and the marchionesses entered. Between the wide hangings of dark-blue velvet, on which glittered the cross of St. Ladislas, and under the canopy supported by gilt pillars, sat the empress, like an idol, glittering in the shadow in her watered-silver brocade, the ermine imperial mantle falling in heavy folds to her feet, a small diadem sparkling upon her head. To the right of the throne, on a low stool, sat the Princess Thera, on the left stood the mistress of the robes, the Countess of Threma; round about, on either side, a crowd of ladies-in-waiting, court-officials, equerries, maids of honour, grooms of the bed-chamber....
The duchess made her curtsey, approached the throne and with great reverence, as though with diffident lips, touched the jewelled finger-tips, which the empress held out like a live relic. Then the duchess took two steps backwards; the marchionesses, one after the other, followed her example, surprising everybody by the attractive freshness of their first court-movements, in which the touch of awkwardness became a charm. Then the bows, in a long ritual of withdrawal, backwards. They disappeared through other doors, found themselves in a long gallery, entered other reception-rooms, where people stood waiting for their carriages. And the two girls looked at each other, seeking each other's impressions, still crimson with the excitement in their vain little hearts and strangely surprised at the incomprehensible briefness of this first and all-important moment of their lives as grown-up people, as ladies accompanying their mamma to the Imperial, where they would thenceforth lead their existence. For how many months beforehand they had thought and dreamed of this moment; now, suddenly, with surprising quickness, it was over....
The duchess chucked Hélène under the chin, put Eleonore's veil straight, said that they had curtseyed beautifully, that she had herself even noticed how pleased the Countess of Threma had been with them. Then she chatted busily with the other ladies, introduced the little marchionesses, promised visits. Then she turned to a flunkey:
"Go and see where my carriage is and tell it to leave the rank and drive up last. Here...."
She gave him a gold coin; the flunkey disappeared. A nervous impatience seized the duchess; she looked out anxiously for Dutri. At last her eyes caught sight of him; he came up with his fatuous fussiness:
"Alexa, it's impossible...."
"Have you asked the prince?"
"No, not yet; there's the question, to begin with, whether he'll seeme. But then ... how am I to take you to him? There are always servants hanging about in the doorways, to say nothing of the guards and halberdiers; in the anterooms you run up against a chamberlain at any moment. Really, it is impossible."
She grew angry:
"Begin by asking him. We'll see later how we're to get to him."
Dutri made graceful gestures of despair:
"But, Alexa, can't you really understand ... that it is impossible?..."
She made no reply, not wishing to reflect, her head filled with her stubborn fixed idea to see the prince, to insist on seeing him. And, suddenly, turning to him:
"Very well, if you don't care to do anything for me, you needn't think I shall help you inanyway."
Her nervous, angry voice sounded louder than her first whispered words: the two girls heard her.
"Alexa," he besought her, gently.
"No, no," she resisted, curtly.
He thought of his debts and of Eleonore:
"I'll try," he whispered, in despair.
She promptly rewarded him with a smile; he went, hurried away again, with his eternal air of fussy importance, because of his young imperial master, who was so sadly ill. In the anteroom he found the chamberlain on duty:
"Would the prince be willing to see me?"
The chamberlain shrugged his shoulders:
"I'll ask," he said.
He speedily returned: the prince had sent word that Dutri could come in.
Dutri entered. Othomar lay on a couch covered with tiger-skins, in front of his writing-table. He had grown thinner; his eyes were hollow, his complexion was wan; his neck protruded frail and wasted from the loose turn-down collar of his silk shirt, over which he wore a velvet jacket. In his hand he held an open book. Djalo, the collie, lay on the floor.
Dutri the voluble began to press his request in rapid sentences following close upon one another's heels....
"The duchess?" repeated Othomar, faintly. "No, no...."
Dutri galloped on, simulated melancholy, employed words of gentle, insinuating sadness. Othomar's face assumed an expression which was strange to it and quite new: it was as though the melancholy of his features were crystallizing into a stubborn obstinacy, a silent doggedness.
"No," he said once more, while his voice, too, sounded dogged and obstinate. "Make my apologies to the duchess, Dutri. And where ... where would she wish to see me?"
"I did not fail to point out this difficulty to her excellency; but perhaps, if your highness would be so gracious ... one might nevertheless...."
Othomar closed his eyes and threw his head back; his hand fell loosely upon the collie's head. He made no further reply and his lips were tightly compressed.
Dutri still hesitated: what could he do, what should he tell Alexa?...
But the door opened and the empress entered. The drawing-room was over; she had put off her robes and the crown, but she still wore her stiff, heavy dress of silver brocade. She looked coldly at Dutri and bowed her head slightly, as a sign for him to go: the equerry beat a confused retreat, without his usual tact.
Othomar half-rose from his couch:
"Mamma!..."
She sat down beside him, stroked his forehead with her hand:
"How do you feel?"
He smiled and blinked with his eyes, without replying.
"What was Dutri doing here?"
"He wanted ... Oh, mamma, never mind, don't ask me!... How beautiful you look! May I, too, kiss your hand?"
Winningly, jestingly he took her hand and kissed it. She took his book from his fingers, read the treasonable title:
"Are you reading again, Othomar?... You know you mustn't read so much. And why all these strange books?..."
On the table lay Lassalle, Marx, works by Russian nihilists, a pamphlet by Bakounine, pamphlets by Zanti.... The little work which he was reading was by a well-known Liparian anarchist and entitled,Injustice by the Grace of God;it overthrew everything: religion and the state; it addressed itself directly to the crowned tyrants in power; it addressed itself directly to Oscar.
"Is it to get back your health, Othomar, that you read this sort of thing?" she asked, in a tone of pained reproach.
"But, mamma, I must see what it is that they want...."
"And what do they want?"
He looked pensively before him:
"I don't know what they want, I can't understand them. They employ very long sentences, the same sentences over and over again, with the same words over and over again. I can just make out that they disapprove of everything that exists and want something different. But yet sometimes...."
"Sometimes what?"
"Sometimes they say terrible things, terrible because they sound so true, mamma. When they speak of God and prove that He does not exist, when they describe our whole system of government as a monstrosity and reject all authority, including our own.... They sometimes speak like children who have suddenly learnt to talk and to judge; and then sometimes they suddenly speak clearly; and then very primitive thoughts arise in me: if God exists, why is there any injustice and misery; and our authority: on what right is that founded? O God, mamma, what right have we to reign over others, over millions? Tell me—but argue from the beginning: don't argue backwards; don't begin with us: begin with our first rulers, our usurpers—what right had they? And does ours merely spring from theirs? Oh, these problems, these simple problems: who can solve them, my God, who can solve them?..."
Elizabeth suddenly turned pale. She stared at him as though he had gone mad:
"Who gives you these books?" she asked, harshly, hoarsely, anxiously.
"Dutri, Leoni; Andro has also fetched me some."
"They're mad!" exclaimed the empress, rising. "Why do you ask for them?"
"I want to know, mamma...."
"Othomar," she cried, "will you do what I ask?"
"Yes, mamma," he replied, gently, "but sit down again and ... and don't be angry. And ... and don't say 'Othomar.' And ... and go and change your dress: oh, I can't see you in that dress; you are so far from me; your voice doesn't reach me and I daren't kiss you: you are not my mother, you are the empress! Mamma, O mamma!..."
His voice appealed to her. A powerful emotion awoke in her.
"O my boy!" she cried, with a half-sob breaking in her throat.
"Yes, yes, call me that.... Mamma, let's be quick and find each other again, let us not lose each other. What is your request?"
"Give me all those books."
"I will give them to you; they make me no happier, when all is said!"
"But then why are you unhappy, my boy, my boy?"
"Mamma, look at the world, look at our people, see how they suffer, see how they are oppressed! What shall I ever be able to do for them! I shall always be powerless, in spite of all our power! Oh, it grows so dark in front of me, I can see nothing more, I have no hope; only Utopians have any hope left, but I ... I no longer hope, for I can do nothing, nothing!... O my God, mamma, the whole country is falling upon me and crushing me and I can do nothing, nothing!... I shall have to reign and I shall not be able to, mamma. What am I? A poor sickly boy: how can I become emperor? I don't know why it is, mamma, nor what it comes from, but I don't feel like a future emperor, I feel like a feeble child! I feel like your child, your boy, and nothing more...."
He seemed about to throw himself into her arms, but on the contrary he flung himself backwards, as though he were frightened by her brilliant attire; his head dropped nervelessly on his chest, his arms fell loosely down. She saw his movement: her first feeling was one of regret that she had come to him in court-dress, longing as she did to see him, not allowing herself the time to change. But this regret passed through her as a transient emotion, for it was followed by an intense dizziness, as though a yawning abyss opened at her feet, as though the earth retreated and black nothingness gaped before her. A despair as of utter impotence enveloped her soul. Vaguely she stretched out her arms and threw them round his neck, as though she were groping in the dark, with wandering eyes:
"My boy, don't talk like that any more, because ... when you talk like that, you take away my strength too!" she whispered, in alarm. "For how can it be helped? You must, we all must...."
"Forgive me, mamma, but I ... I shall not be able to. Oh, I see it clearly now! I am not excited, I am calm. I see it, I prophesy it, it can never be...."
"But papa is still so young and so strong, my boy; and, when you grow older...."
"The older I grow, the more impossible it will be, mamma. I was always frightened of it as a child, but I never realized it so desperately as now. No, mamma, it cannot be. Now that I am ill, I have plenty of time to reflect; and I now see before me what the end of all our trouble is bound to be...."
His eyes gazed at the floor in despair; she still half-clung to him, helplessly; a menacing shiver seemed to float through the room.
"Mamma...."
She made no response.
"I must tell you of my resolve...."
"What resolve?..."
"Will you tell it to papa?"
"What, what, Othomar ... my boy?"
"That I can't marry ... Valérie, because...."
"Later, later: you needn't marry yet...."
"No, mamma, I never can, because I...."
She looked at him beseechingly, enquiringly.
"Because I want to abdicate ... my rights ... in favour of ... Berengar...."
She made no reply; feebly she drooped against him, not knowing how to console and cheer him, and softly and plaintively began to sob. It was as though her soul was being flooded with anguish, slowly but persistently, until it brimmed over. She reproached herself with it all. He was her child: the future Emperor of Liparia had derived this weakness from her. And the manifestation of this agonizing mystery of heredity before her despairing eyes deprived her of all her strength, of all her courage, of all her power of acquiescence and resignation.
"Mamma," he repeated.
She sobbed on.
"Don't be so disconsolate.... Berengar will be better than I.... You'll tell papa, won't you?... Or no, never mind, if it costs you too great an effort: I'll tell him myself...."
She started up nervously from her despair:
"O my God, no! Othomar, no! Don't talk to him about it: he is so passionate, he would ... he would murder you! Promise me that you will not talk to him about it!Iwill tell him—O my God!—Iwill tell him...."
But a tremor of hope revived within her.
"But, Othomar, I ask you, why do you do this? You are ill now, but you will get better and then ... then you will think differently!"
He gazed out before him: his presentiment quivered through him; he saw his dream again: the streets of Lipara filled with crape, right up to the sky, where it veiled the sunlight. And over his features there passed again that new air of hardness, of dogged obstinacy which made him unrecognizable; he shook his head slowly from side to side, from side to side:
"No, mamma, I shall never think differently. Believe me, it will be better so."
When she saw him like that, her new hope collapsed again and she sobbed once more. Sobbing, she rose; amid her sorrow yawned a void; she was losing something: her son.
"Are you going?" he asked.
She nodded yes, sobbing.
"Do you forgive me?"
She nodded yes again. Then she gave him a smile, a smile full of despair; lacking the strength to kiss him, she went out, still sobbing.
He remained alone and rose from his couch. He stood in the middle of the room; his eyes stared at the collie:
"Why need I give her pain!" he thought.
Everything in his soul hurt him.
"Why did I go on that voyage with Herman?" he asked himself again. "It was in those first days of rest that I began to think so much. And yet Professor Barzia says, 'Rest!' ... What does he know about me? What does one person know about another?... Djalo!" he cried.
The collie ran up, wriggling, joyfully.
"Djalo, what is right? How ought the world to be? Must there be kings and emperors, Djalo, or had we better all disappear?"
The dog looked at him, wagging its tail violently; suddenly it jumped up and licked his face.
"And why, Djalo, need one man always make the other unhappy? Why need princes make their people unhappy? Will life always remain the same, for ages and ages?..."
Othomar sank into a heap on the couch; his hand fell on the dog, which licked it passionately.
"Oh!" he sobbed. "My people, my people!..."
At this moment the last carriages were driving away in the fore-court of the Imperial; the staring crowd, behind the grenadiers, peeped curiously at the pretty ladies glistening through the glass of the state-coaches. The Duchess of Yemena's carriage came last of all.
A spirit of gloom seemed to haunt the ringing marble halls of the Imperial, a dim melancholy to stifle the cadences of the voices and their echoes and to hang from the tall ceilings as it had been a heavy web of atmosphere. It was autumn; the first parties were to take place; the first court-ball was given. But it seemed to be given because there was no help for it: it was a slow, official, tedious function. The more intimate circles of the Imperial, those of the Duchess of Yemena and the diplomatic body, regretted the more select assemblies in the smaller rooms of the empress. They looked upon those great balls as necessary inflictions. The empress' smaller dances, however, were always favoured as most charming entertainments. But the empress had decided that they should not take place, because of the illness of the crown-prince. At this first great ball their majesties appeared only for a brief moment, to take part in the imperial quadrille....
Grey ashes fell over the glittering mood of imperial festivity which so short a time ago had been the usual atmosphere of the palace. The dinners, once the glories of day after day, were shortened; only the most necessary invitations were given. The emperor himself maintained a constant mood of sullenness: the army bill for the augmentation of the active forces was still attacked in principle in the house of deputies; and the emperor was resolved at all costs to uphold his minister of war. Moreover, thanks to the dash of childishness that showed through all his energy, he had not recovered from his disappointment at the postponement of the Duke of Xara's marriage. He seemed in a continual state of irritation because his Liparian world would not go as he wanted it to go.
Neither the empress nor the prince himself thought it a favourable moment to communicate the mournful resolution to the emperor. But for this very reason the empress began silently to cherish fresh hope. Nothing had been said yet: the humiliating secret existed only between her son and herself. Humiliating, because what public reason could he allege for resigning the succession? What pretext would sound plausible enough to conceal the true motive of weakness and impotence? And yet he was her child and Oscar's! It seemed to the empress unfeasible to communicate Othomar's wish to his father and to tell the emperor that his own son had no capacity for government. Oh, what sacrifice would she not be prepared to make, if only she could spare her child this humiliation! But was he really so powerless to master himself and to draw himself up, proudly, under the weight of what was as yet no more than a prince's coronet? Had she but known how to counteract his discouragement; but she had merely sobbed, merely given way before his despair; in vain had she sought in his soul the secret spring that should cause him to rise from the impotence into which the languor of his reflections had made him sink.... And yet she felt that there must be a secret spring, because she instinctively divined its presence in the souls of all her equals: it was the mystery of their sovereignty, the reason why they were sovereigns, the reason of their prerogative. She possessed the adorable, child-like faith that in them, the crowned heads, there exists a common essence of distinction which raises them above the crowd: that single drop of sacred blood in their veins, that single atom of inherited divinity, which sheds lustre through their souls. She believed in their high exclusive right of majesty. Because she believed in that even as she believed in her sinfulness as a human being and in the absolution of her confessor, the Archbishop of Lipara, she could never for one instant doubt their right divine as rulers. Whatever people might think, or write, or want different, theirs was the right: of this she was certain, as certain as of the Trinity. That Othomar had doubted the existence of God had struck her as impious, but it had not shattered her so much as his disbelief in their right. Was he alone then lacking in that essence of distinction, that sacred golden drop of blood, that divine atom? And, if he lacked it, if he, the crown-prince, lacked majesty, was this monstrous lack her fault, the fault of the mother who bore him?
The suspicion of this guilt crushed her; and before she even dared to speak to Othomar she humbled herself before the archbishop. The prelate, alarmed at these portents in the mysterious melancholy of the Imperial, had scarcely known how to comfort her. After that, she remained prostrate for hours before her crucifix. She prayed with all her soul, prayed for light for herself and for her son, prayed for strength and that the spark might descend upon Othomar. When she had prayed thus, so long and with such conviction, there came over her, like an afflatus of the Holy Ghost, a sense of peace. She became herself again, she awaited events, regained her credulous fatalism, her conviction that nothing happens but what must happen and is right. What was wrong did not happen. If it were fated that Othomar must receive that spark, that would be right; if it were fated that he must abdicate, that would be right too, O God, right with a strange, inscrutable rightness!...
Because the days had passed without her having yet spoken to the emperor, she hoped anew; she hoped that Othomar would be his old self again and no longer seek his own degradation. But it was as though she hoped in spite of everything; for, each time that she now saw Othomar, she found him duller and more exhausted, more helpless beneath the certainty of his weakness. Professor Barzia, who treated the prince personally and twice a day gave him his cold-water douche in the palace, seemed to be least uneasy about Othomar's physical weakness. The prince was not robust, but the professor divined in his delicate constitution the presence of the element that had sprung from the first rough, sensual strength of the Czyrkiski race: the Slavonic element, which had become enervated through its Latin admixtures, but had lingered on; a secret toughness, an indestructible factor of unsuspected firmness, which lay deep down, like a foundation, and upon which much seemed to be built that was very slender and fragile. What had once been rude strength the professor believed he had discovered in a certain toughness; what had been cruelty and lust, in a certain enervation, which had hitherto been held in check by self-restraint and a spontaneous sense of duty, but which now suddenly revealed itself in this excessive lassitude. Barzia distinctly perceived in Othomar the scion of his ancestors; and he considered that, though the rich physical vigour of the original sovereign blood had become refined, as if it were now flowing more thinly through feebler veins, yet that blood was not so impoverished that the delicacy of this future emperor need be ascribed to racial exhaustion. Possibly Barzia's sudden affection for the prince tinged this physiological diagnosis with excessive optimism; at any rate, the professor had not the least fear of this fragility, or even of this nervous weakness. What he did fear was lest those mental qualities which had so suddenly endeared the prince to him should not be able to maintain themselves during this period of fatigue and exhaustion. Spontaneous, unreflected, uncalculated he knew those virtues to be in the prince, as it were a treasure unknown to himself: would they be lost, now, in these mournful days, or would they remain, perhaps develop, become more and more refined, make up to Othomar in moral strength for what he lacked in physical strength and in this way cure him? For the professor knew it: these qualities alone could effect a cure....
Othomar himself thought neither of his virtues nor of his blood: he thought of his future and thought of it with an hourly-increasing dread. When the empress asked Barzia whether this rest would be good for the prince and whether distraction would not be better, the professor declared that the prince had had plenty of distraction lately. He must first get over his fatigue, get over it entirely; it mattered less with what the prince kept his brain occupied for the moment....
But Barzia did not mean this altogether and would doubtless have been very far from meaning it at all, had he known of what the prince was thinking, or been fully able to judge his utter lack of mental elasticity.
And the days passed by. Othomar did not mention his resolution to the empress again, desiring to give her as little pain as possible; neither did the empress allude to it: she hoped on.
But in Othomar's meditations it revolved incessantly, like a wheel: he was able to do nothing for his people and yet he loved them; he did not know how to govern them, he would abdicate his rights and his title of crown-prince: Berengar should become Duke of Xara....
The small prince came and paid his brother a short visit every morning; he always wore his little uniform, looking like a sturdy little general in miniature, and Othomar watched him with a smile.
Was there no wish to rule in the boy's medieval little brain, was there no jealousy in his passionate little heart? Othomar remembered the history of Liparia, in the cruel times of their early middle-ages, that terrible drama—they still showed at St. Ladislas the chamber where it had been enacted—that second son stabbing his elder brother in his lust for the crown and hurling the corpse from an oriel window into the Zanthos, which flowed beneath the fortress. What had the boy inherited of this rivalry? And, though this rivalry had been wholly refined into less salient feelings, would not an immense happiness enter Berengar's small princely soul if he were to learn that he might be crown-prince now and that one day he would be ... emperor? But what would the boy think of him, Othomar, for giving away all this magnificence of his own free will? Would he despise him, while yet feeling grateful to him, or would he cherish mistrust, suspecting a lurking mystery behind all this greatness, which Othomar cast from him?...
At such times Othomar would draw the little fellow to him with silent compassion, but would take pleasure in feeling the firm muscles of his sturdy little arms and listening to his short, crisp little speeches. Then Berengar rode away and Djalo was allowed to run with him through the park: in an hour he would bring the dog back to Othomar and talk with great importance of his lessons, which were just beginning.
And, when Berengar had gone, Othomar lay thinking about him in his long hours of reverie, already looked upon his brother as actually crown-prince, erased his own name from the list of future sovereigns, thought of what he would do when he was cured and had shaken off the last remnant of his purple, remembered his uncle Xaverius, who was the abbot of a monastery, and pictured himself studying, compiling works on history and sociology....
These were autumn days. The sunny blue of the sky was often clouded with grey; in the morning the winds blew from the north, blew over the sea till it became the colour of steel; then the sun broke through and shone very warmly for a couple of hours, with an occasional cold blast, suddenly and treacherously rushing round the corners of the streets; then, at four or half-past four o'clock, the sun was extinguished and the pale sky was left exhaling its icy chillness on the open harbour, between the white palaces, in the streets and squares.
It was a treacherous time of year: the empress and Berengar had caught cold driving in an open carriage; they both kept their rooms and Othomar in his turn went to visit them; the empress was coughing, the little prince had a temperature; there was never so much illness about as now, the doctors declared. And a melancholy continued to brood through the halls of the Imperial, through the whole town, where the imperial family were no longer seen at the opera and at parties. Never had the daily dinners at the Imperial been so short, with so few guests; and it made an insurmountably sad impression not to see the empress seated next to the emperor, delicate, distinguished, august, but in her stead the Princess Thera, who seemed quite incapable of bringing a smile to Oscar's grim and peevish features.
Othomar did not even know that those about the empress were anxious on her behalf: she always received him with all the cheerfulness that she could muster, in spite of the pain on her chest; the doctors told him nothing, no one gave him the bulletins, every one tried to spare him; and besides there was really less anxiety in the Imperial than in the town and throughout the country. But the little prince received Othomar with less meekness than did the empress; and every day there were silent rages, sulking displays against the doctors for keeping him in bed.
Once, when the crown-prince came to see Berengar, the doctors were with him; the fever had increased, but the little prince wanted to get out of bed; he was naughty, used ugly names, had even struck the good-natured, big-headed doctor and pummelled him with his little clenched fist.
"As soon as you're better, Berengar," said Othomar, after first reproving him, "I shall make you a present."
"What of?" asked the boy, eagerly. "But I am better now!"
"No, no, you must do what the doctors tell you and not vex them."
"And what will you give me then?"
Othomar looked at him long and firmly.
"What shall I have then?" repeated the child.
"I mustn't tell you yet, Berengar; it's really rather big for you still."
"What is it then? A horse?"
"No, it's not as big as a horse, but heavier. Don't ask any more about it and also don't try and guess what it is, but be obedient: then you'll get better and then you shall have it."
"Heavier than a horse and not so big!..." Berengar pondered, with glowing cheeks.
With his head bowed on his breast, dragging his footsteps, Othomar returned to his room. He stayed there for hours, sitting silently, gloomily, in the same attitude; as usual, he did not appear at dinner and hardly ate what Andro brought him. Then he went to lie down on his couch, took up a book to read, but put it down again and raised himself up, as though with a sudden impulse:
"Why not now?" he thought. "Why keep on postponing it?..."
Night fell, but the upper corridors of the palace were not yet lighted; dragging his fatigue through this dusky shadow, Othomar went to the emperor's anterooms. The chamberlain announced him.
Oscar sat at his writing-table, pen in hand.
"Am I disturbing you, papa? Or can I speak to you?"
"No, you're not disturbing me.... Have you been to see mamma?"
"Yes, this afternoon; she was pretty well, but Berengar's temperature was higher."
The emperor glanced up at him:
"Worse than this morning?"
"I don't know: he was rather feverish."
The emperor rose:
"Do you want to talk to me?"
"Yes, papa."
"Wait a moment, then. I've not been to Berengar yet to-day."
He went out, leaving the door ajar.
Othomar remained alone. He sat down. He looked round the great work-room, which he knew so well from their morning consultations with the chancellor. Lately, however, he had not attended these. He thought over what he should say; meanwhile his eyes wandered around; they fell upon the great mirror with its gilt arabesques; something seemed strange to him. Then he rose and walked up to the glass:
"I was under the impression there was a flaw near the top of it," he thought. "I can't well be mistaken. Has it been renewed?"
He was still standing by the looking-glass, when Oscar returned:
"Berengar is not at all well; the fever is increasing," he said; and the tone of his voice hesitated. "Mamma is with him...."
Absorbed as he was in his own meditations, it did not strike Othomar that the little prince must have become worse for the empress, who was herself ill, to go to him.
"And about what did you want to speak to me?" asked the emperor, as the prince remained silent.
"About Berengar, papa."
"About Berengar?"
"About Berengar and myself. I have been contrasting myself with him, papa. We are brothers, we are both your sons. Which of us, do you think, takes most after you ... and ... our ancestors?"
"What are you driving at, Othomar?"
"At what is right, papa: right and just. Nature is sometimes unjust and blind; she ought to have let Berengar be born first and me next ... or even left me out altogether."
"Once more, what are you driving at, Othomar?"
"Can't you see, papa? I will tell you. Is Berengar not more of a monarch than I am? Is that not why he's your favourite? And ought I to deprive him of his natural rights for the sake of my traditional rights? I want to abdicate in his favour, papa. I want to abdicate everything, all my rights."
"The boy's mad," muttered Oscar.
"All my rights," repeated Othomar, dreamily, as though he foresaw the future: his little brother crowned.
"Othomar, are you raving?" asked the emperor.
"Papa, I am not raving. What I am now telling you I have thought over for days, perhaps weeks; I don't know: time passes so quickly.... What I am telling you I have discussed with mamma: it made her cry, but she did not oppose me. She looks at it as I do.... And what I tell you holds good; I have made up my mind and nothing can make me change it.... I am fond of Berengar; I am glad to give up everything to him; and I shall pray that he may become happy through my gift. I am convinced—and so are you—that Berengar will make a better emperor than I. What talent do I possess for ruling?..."
He shrugged his shoulders in helplessness, with a nervous shudder that jolted them:
"None," he answered himself. "I have no talent, I can do nothing. I do not know how to decide—as now—nor how to act; I shall always be a dreamer. Why then should I be emperor and he nothing more than the commander-in-chief of my army or my fleet? Surely that can't be right; that can't have been what nature intended.... Papa, I give it him, my birthright, and I ... I shall know how to live, if I must...."
The emperor had listened to him with his elbows on the table and his hands under his chin and now sat staring at him with his small, pinched eyes:
"Do you mean all this?" he asked.
"Yes, papa."
"You're not delirious?"
"No, papa, I'm not delirious."
"Then you're mad."
The emperor rose:
"Then you're mad, I tell you. Othomar, realize that you're mad and return to your senses; don't become quite insane."
"Why do you call me insane, papa?Can'tyou agree with me that Berengar would be better than I?"
His father's cruel glances stabbed Othomar through and through:
"No, you're not insane in that; you're right there...."
"And why, then, am I insane because I wish, for that reason, to abdicate in his favour?"
"Because it's impossible, Othomar."
"What law prevents me?"
"My will, Othomar."
The prince drew himself up proudly:
"Your will?" he cried. "Your will? You acknowledge that I am nothing of a prince except by birth? You acknowledge that Berengar does possess your capacity for ruling and you will not, youwillnot have me abdicate? And you think that I shall fall in with that will?..."
He uttered a hoarse laugh:
"No, papa, I shall pay no heed to that will. You can carry through your will in everything, but not in this. Though you called out your whole army, you could not prevail against me here. There is a limit to the power of human will, papa, and nothing, nothing, nothing can prevent me from considering myself unfit to reign and fromrefusingto wear a crown!"
The emperor seized Othomar's wrists; his hot breath hissed in Othomar's face:
"You damned cub!" he snarled between his large, white teeth. "You wretched nincompoop! You're right: there's nothing of the emperor in you; there never will be. If I didn't know better, I'd say you were the son of a footman. You're right, you're incompetent. You're nothing: our crown doesn't fit you. And yet, though I had to lock you up in a prison, so that no one might hear of your baseness, you shallnotabdicate your rights. My will extends farther than you can see. Do you hear? You shan't do it, you shan't resign, though from this moment onwards I have to hide you, as a disgrace, from the world. Your slack brain can't understand that, can it? You can't understand that I'm fonder of Berengar than of a poltroon like you and that nevertheless I won't have him as my successor in your stead? Then I shall have to tell you. I won't have it, so as not to let the world see the degeneration of our race. I will not have the world know how pitiably we have deteriorated in you; and I would rather ... I would rather murder you than allow you to abdicate!"
Fiercely Oscar took the prince by his shoulders, pushed him backwards on a couch, on which Othomar sank in a huddled attitude, while his father continued to hold him like a prey in the grip of his strong hands:
"But I tell you," continued the emperor, "I tell you, you arenotthe son of a footman, you are my son; and I shall not murder you, because I am your father. I will only say this to you, Othomar: you might have spared me this. I believe you have a high opinion of your own delicacy of feeling, but you have not the very least feeling. You do not even feel that you have been contemplating a villainy, the villainy of a proletarian, a slave, a pariah, a wretch. You have not felt even for an instant the pain you would cause me by such an infamy. You saw that I was fonder of your brother; you thought that I should approve of your cowardly proposal. Not for a moment did the thought occur to you that, with that cowardice of yours, you would givemethe greatest pain that I could ever experience!..."
Othomar, utterly crushed, had fallen back upon the couch. He was no longer able to distinguish what was just and what was true; he no longer knew himself at that minute; his father's words lashed his soul like whips. And he felt no strength within him to resist them: the insulting reproaches kept him down, as though he had been thrashed. Infamy and disgrace, insanity and degeneration: he collapsed beneath them; he gulped down the mud of them, till he felt like suffocating. And that he did not suffocate and continued to breathe, continued to live, that the light was bright around him, that things remained unchanged, that the outside world knew nothing: all this was despair to him. For a moment he thought of his mother. But he wished for darkness, for death, to hide himself, himself and his shame, his degeneration, the leprosy of his pariah-temperament.... It flashed through him in the second after that last lash of reproach, flashed across his despondent soul. He knew that Oscar always kept a loaded revolver in an open pigeon-hole of his writing-table. His brain grew tense in the effort of thinking how to reach it. He rose, approached the pigeon-hole; suddenly he sprang towards it, stretched out his hand and seized the pistol....
Did Oscar believe that his son had been driven mad by his last words and now wanted his father's life? Did he perceive this ecstasy of suicide in his offspring, was his quivering brain penetrated by the horrible thought that self-destruction would be the pariah's last refuge? Be this as it might, he rushed at Othomar. But the prince lightly leapt out of his reach, pointed the revolver, with wild eyes, with distorted features, in senseless despair, upon himself, upon his own forehead, on which the veins swelled blue....
"Othomar!" roared the emperor.
At this moment hurried footsteps were heard outside, confused words sounded in the anteroom and the Marquis of Xardi, the emperor's aide-de-camp, alarmed and flurried, threw the door wide open....
"Sir!" he exclaimed. "The empress asks if your majesty will come to Prince Berengar this instant...."
The shot had gone off, into the wall. Blood dripped from Othomar's ear. The emperor had caught hold of the crown-prince and torn the revolver, still loaded in five chambers, from him; a second shot went off in that brief moment of struggle, into the ceiling, Othomar remained standing vacantly.
"Marquis!" the emperor hissed out at Xardi. "I don't know what you think, but I tell you this: you've seen nothing, you think nothing. What happened here before you came in ... did not happen."
He pointed his finger, threateningly at Xardi:
"Should you ever forget, marquis, that it did not happen, then I shall forget who you are, though your pedigree dates back farther than ours!"
Xardi stood deathly pale before his emperor:
"My God, sir!..."
"What do you mean by entering your sovereign's room in this unmannerly fashion? Even the Duke of Xara has himself announced, marquis!"
"Sir...."
"What? Speak up!..."
"Her majesty...."
"Well, her majesty?"
"Prince Berengar ... the fever has increased ... he is delirious, sir, and the doctors ..."
The emperor turned pale:
"Is he dead?" he asked, fiercely. "Tell me at once."
"Not dead, sir, but...."
"But what?"
"But the doctors ... have no hope...."
With an oath of anguish the emperor pushed the aide aside and darted out of the room.
The prince remained standing. Life returned to him: a reality full of anguish, born of nightmare. His eyes swam with tears:
"Xardi," he implored, "Xardi ... your house has always been loyal to our house; swear to me that you will be silent."
The marquis looked at the crown-prince in consternation:
"Highness...."
"Swear to me, Xardi."
"I swear to you, highness," said the aide, subdued; and he stretched out his fingers to the crucifix hanging on the wall.
Othomar pressed his hand:
"Did Prince Berengar...." He could scarcely speak. "Did Prince Berengar become so ill suddenly?..."
"The fever is increasing every moment, highness, and he is delirious...."
"I will go to him," said Othomar.
He wiped the blood from his ear with his handkerchief and held the cambric, which was at once soaked through, against it.
In the last anteroom he passed the chamberlain and looked at him askance.
Xardi stopped for a moment:
"The Duke of Xara has hurt himself slightly," he said. "He was examining the emperor's revolver when I went in and he started: two shots went off."
"I heard them," whispered the chamberlain, pale as death.
"There might have been an accident...."
They were silent for a moment; their glances were full of understanding; a shudder crept down their backs. The chill night seemed to be descending over the palace as with clouds of evil omen.
"And ... the little prince?..." asked the chamberlain, shivering.
Xardi shrugged his shoulders; his eyes grew moist, through innate, immemorial love for his sovereigns:
"Dying," he answered, faintly.
The crown-prince passed through the anteroom: one of the doctors stood dipping poultices into a basin of ice; a valet was bringing in a pail of fresh ice. The door of the bedroom was open and Othomar remained standing at the door. The little prince lay on his camp-bed, talking in a low, sing-song tone; the empress, pale, suffering, bearing up in spite of everything, sat beside him with Princess Thera.
The emperor exchanged brief words with the two other doctors, whose features were overcast with a stark hopelessness; a mordant anguish distorted Oscar's face, which became furrowed with deep wrinkles:
"My God, he doesn't know me, he doesn't know me!" Othomar heard the emperor complain.
"Nor me," murmured the empress.
"What can it be? What, what, what can it be?" sang the little prince; and his usually shrill little voice sounded soft as a bird's melody: it was as though he were playing by himself. "I'm to have a present from my brother, from my brother, something nice!" he sang on.
The empress could distinguish his words, but she did not understand; and when he went on to sing the name of the crown-prince, with his title:
"Othomar, O Othomar of Xara, of Xara!..." she turned to the door and gently implored:
"Othomar, he's calling your name; come, perhaps he will know you!"
Othomar approached; he went past the emperor and knelt down by the bed; a smile lit up Berengar's little face.
"He is becoming calmer," said the kind doctor, whose tears were running down his cheeks, to Oscar. "Does your majesty see? The prince recognizes his highness the duke...."
A note of gladness sounded in his voice.
But a violent jealousy distorted the emperor's features:
"No, no," he said.
"Certainly, sir, only look," the doctor insisted, his hope reviving.
"O Othomar, O Othomar of Xara!" sang the little prince: he had recognized his brother, but did not see him in the flesh, saw him only in his waking dream, through the mist of his fever.
"What do you bring me that's nice? Smaller than a horse, but heavier? Heavier? Oh, how heavy it is, how heavy, heavy, heavy!..."
His little voice came as though with an effort, as though he were lifting something; his convulsive, small, broad hands made a gesture of laborious lifting.
"Berengar," said the crown-prince; and his voice broke, his heart sank within him....
"Othomar," replied the child.
A cry of anguish escaped the emperor.
"Yes, you're always so good to me," continued the little prince in his sing-song. "You always give me such nice things. You know, those lovely guns on my last birthday? And that pistol? But mamma's afraid of that!... Are you dying, Othomar? Look, there's blood on your ear.... But when people bleed they die! Are you dying, Othomar? Look, blood on your coat...."
The empress remained sitting straight upright; she glared from Berengar at the bleeding wound of her eldest son....
"Blood, blood, blood!" sang Berengar. "Othomar is dying! Yes, he always gives me so many nice things, does Othomar. I have so many already, many more than all the other children of Liparia put together! And what am I to have now?... Still more?... That nice thing: what is it? I can feel it: it's so heavy; but I can't see it...."
The doctor had come from the anteroom and approached with the poultices.
"I can't see it!... I can't see it!..." the boy sang out, painfully and faintly.
When the doctor applied the poultices, Berengar struggled, began to cry, as though a great sorrow was springing up in his little heart:
"I can't see it!" he sobbed. "I shall never see it!..."
A violent paroxysm succeeded the sobbing: he struck out wildly with his arms, pulled off the poultices, threw the ice off his head, stood up mad-eyed in his bed, flung away the sheets.... Othomar rose, the empress also. The emperor sat in a chair, his face covered with his hands, and sobbed by Princess Thera's side. The doctors approached the bed, endeavoured to calm Berengar, but he struck them: the fever mounted into his little brain in madness.
At this moment Professor Barzia entered: he was not staying in the palace; he had been sent for at his hotel.
"What is your highness doing here?" he said, point-blank, to Othomar.
The crown-prince made no reply.
"Your highness will retire to your own rooms at once," the professor commanded.
"Save my boy!" exclaimed the emperor, broken, sobbing.
"I am saving the crown-prince first, sir: he is killing himself here!"
"Very well, but next savehim!" shouted Oscar, fiercely.
The other doctors had given orders: a tub was brought in, filled with lukewarm water, regulated by a thermometer.... But Othomar saw no more: he rushed away, driven out by Barzia's stern glances. He rushed along the corridors, through a group of officers and chamberlains, who stood anxiously whispering and made way for him. He plunged into his own room, which was not lighted. In the dark, he thought he was flinging himself upon a couch, but bumped upon the ground. There he remained lying. Then, as though crushed by the darkness, he began to croon, to moan, to sob aloud, with sharp, hysterical cries.
Andro entered; his foot struck against the prince. He lit the gas, tried to lift his master. But Othomar lay heavy as lead; fierce and prolonged, his nervous cries came jolting from his throat. Andro rang, once, twice, three times; he went on ringing for a long time; at last a footman and a chamberlain appeared together, at different doors.
"Call Professor Barzia!" cried Andro to the footman. "Excellency, will you help me lift his highness?" he begged the chamberlain.
But, when the footman turned round, he ran against the professor, who could do nothing for the little prince and had followed the crown-prince. He saw Othomar lying on the floor, moaning, screaming....
"Leave me alone with his highness," he ordered, with a glance around him.
The chamberlain, Andro, the footman obeyed his order.
The professor was a tall old man, heavily-built and strong; he approached the prince and lifted him in his arms, notwithstanding the leaden heaviness of hysteria. Thus he held him, merely with his arms around him, upon the couch and looked deep into his eyes, with hypnotic glances. Suddenly Othomar ceased his cries; his voice was hushed. His head fell feebly upon Barzia's shoulder. The professor continued to hold him in his arms. The prince became calm, like a quieted child, without Barzia's having uttered a word.
"May I request your highness to go to bed?" said the professor, with a gentle voice of command.
He assisted Othomar to get up and himself lit the light in the bedroom and helped the prince off with his coat.
"What has made your highness' ear bleed?" asked Barzia, whose fingers were soiled with clotted blood.
"A revolver-shot," Othomar began, faintly; his closed and averted eyes told the rest.
The professor said nothing more. As though Othomar were a child, he went on helping him, washed his ear, his neck, his hands, with a mother's gentleness. Then he made him lie down in bed, covered him over, tidying the room like a servant. Then he went and sat by the bed, where Othomar lay staring with strange, wide-open eyes: he took the prince's hand and sat thus for a long time, looking softly down upon him. The light behind, turned down low, threw Barzia's large head into the shadow and just glanced upon his bald cranium, from which a few grey locks hung down his neck. At last he said, gently:
"Your highness wishes to get well, do you not?"
"Yes," said Othomar, in spite of himself.
"How does your highness propose to do so?" asked the professor.
The prince did not answer.
"Doesn't your highness know? Then you must think it over. But you must keep very calm, will you not, very calm...."
And he stroked Othomar's hand with a gentle, regular motion, as though anointing it with balsam.
"For your highness must never again give way to nervous attacks. Your highness must study how to prevent them. I am giving your highness much to think about," continued Barzia, with a smile. "I am doing this because I want to let your highness think of other things than of what you are thinking. I want to clear your brain for you. Are you tired and do you want to go to sleep, or shall I go on talking?"
"Yes, go on," whispered the prince.
"There are days of great grief in store for the Imperial," the doctor resumed, gently. "Your highness must think of those days without permitting yourself to be overcome by the grief of them.... The little prince will probably not recover, highness. Will you think of that ... and think of your parents, their poor majesties? There are days like these for a nation, or for a single family, in which grief seems to pile itself up. For does not this day, this night seem to mark the end of your race, my prince?... Lie still, lie still, don't move: let me talk on, like a garrulous old man.... Does your highness know that the emperor to-day, for the first time in his whole life, cried, sobbed? His younger son is dying. Between this boy and the father is a first-born son, who is very, very ill.... Is not all this the end?"
"Yet, if God wills it so," whispered Othomar.
"It is our duty to be resigned," said Barzia. "But does God will it so?"
"Who can tell?..."
"Ask yourself, but not now, highness: to-morrow, to-morrow.... After the saddest nights ... the mornings come again...."
The professor rose and mixed a powder in a glass of water:
"Drink this, highness...."
Othomar drank.
"And now lie quiet and close those wide eyes."
"I shall not be able to sleep though...."
"That is not necessary, only close those eyes...."
Barzia stroked them with his hand; the prince kept them closed. His hand again lay in the hand of the professor.
A hush descended upon the room. Outside, in the corridors and galleries, perplexed steps approached at times, from the distance, in futile haste; then they sounded away, far away, in despair. A world of sorrow seemed to fill the palace, there, outside that room, until it held every hall of it with its dark, tenebrous woe. But in this one room nothing stirred. The professor sat still and stared before him, absorbed in thought; the crown-prince had fallen asleep like a child.
Next morning the day rose upon an empire in mourning. Prince Berengar had passed away in the night.
Othomar had slept long and woke late, as in a strange calm. When Professor Barzia told him of the young prince's end—the apathy of the last moments, after a raging fever—it seemed to him as if he already knew it. The great sorrow which he felt was singularly peaceful, without rebellion in his heart, and surprised himself. He remained lying calmly when the professor forbade him to get up. He pictured to himself without emotion the little prince, motionless, with his eyes closed, on his camp-bed. Mechanically he folded his hands and prayed for his brother's little soul.
He was not allowed to leave his room that day and saw only the empress, who came to him for an instant. He was not at all surprised that she too was calm, dry-eyed: she had not yet shed tears. Even when he raised himself from his pillows and embraced her, she did not cry. Nor did he cry, but only his own calmness astonished him: not hers. She stayed for but a moment; then she went away, as though with mechanical steps, and he was left alone. He saw nobody else that day except Barzia: not even Andro entered his room.
Outside the chamber, the prince, judging from certain steps in the corridors, certain sounds of voices—the little that penetrated to him—could divine the sorrow of the palace; he pictured sad tidings spreading through the land, through Europe and causing people to stand in consternation in the presence of death, which had taken them by surprise. Life was not secure: who could tell that he would be alive to-morrow! Vain were the plans of men: who could tell what the hour would bring forth! And he lay thinking of this calmly, in the singular peacefulness of his soul, in which he saw the futility of struggling against life or against death.
Not till next day did Barzia give him leave to get up, late in the afternoon. After his shower-bath, he dressed calmly, in his lancer's uniform, with crape round the sleeve. When he saw himself in the glass, he was surprised at his resemblance to his mother, at seeing how he now walked with the same mechanical step. Barzia allowed him to go to the empress' sitting-room. He there found her, the emperor, Thera and the Archduke and Archduchess of Carinthia, who had arrived at Lipara the evening before. They sat close together, now and then softly exchanging a word.
Othomar went up to the emperor and would have embraced him; Oscar, however, only pressed his hand. After that Othomar embraced his sisters and his brother-in-law. Then he sank down by the empress, took her hand in his and sat still. She looked attenuated and white as chalk in her black gown. She did not weep: only the two princesses sobbed, persistently, again and again.
The family dined alone in the small dining-room, unattended by any of the suite. A depression had descended upon the palace, which seemed wholly silent at this hour, with but now and then the soft footsteps through the galleries of an aide-de-camp carrying a funeral-wreath, or a flunkey bringing a tray full of telegrams. After the short dinner, the family retired once more to the empress' drawing-room. The hours dragged on. Night had fallen. Then the Archbishop of Lipara was announced.
The imperial family rose; they went through the galleries, unattended, to the great knights' hall. Halberdiers stood at the door, in mourning. They entered. The emperor gave his hand to the empress and led her to the throne, whose crown and draperies were covered with crape. On either side were seats for Othomar, the princesses, the archduke.
In the middle of the hall, in front of the throne, rose the catafalque, under a canopy of black and ermine. On it lay the little prince in uniform. Over his feet hung a small blue knight's mantle with a great white cross; a boy's sword lay on his breast; and his little hands were folded over the jewelled hilt. By his little head, somewhat higher up, shone, on a cushion, a small marquis' coronet. Six gilt candelabra with many tall candles shone peacefully down upon the lad's corpse and left the great hall still deeper in shadow: only, outside, the moon rose in the distant blue, nocturnal sky; here and there it tinged with a white glamour the trophies and suits of armour that hung or stood like iron spectres in niches and against the walls. At the foot of the catafalque, on a table like an altar, with a white velvet cloth, a great gilt crucifix spread out its two arms, between two candelabra, in commiseration.
With drawn swords, motionless as the armour on the walls, stood four blue-mantled knights of St. Ladislas, two at either side of the catafalque.
A soft scent of flowers was wafted through the hall. All round the catafalque wreaths of every kind of white blossom were stacked in great heaps; the fragrance of violets outscented all the others.
They sat down: the emperor, the empress and their four children. Slowly the archbishop entered with his priests and choir-boys. Then the imperial party knelt on cushions placed before their seats. The prelate read the prayers for the dead; and the chantedKyrie EleisonandAgnus Deibesought mercy for Berengar's little soul amongst the souls in purgatory, quivered softly through the vast hall, were wafted with the scent of the flowers over the motionless, sleeping face of the imperial child....
The rite came to an end; the prelate sprinkled the holy water, went sprinkling around the catafalque. The princes left the hall, but Othomar stayed on:
"I want to lay my wreath," he whispered to the empress.
The priests also departed, slowly; the crown-prince expressed to the four knights, who were waiting to be relieved by others, his wish to be left alone for a moment. They too withdrew. Then he saw Thesbia appear at the door, with a large white wreath in his hand. He went to the aide-de-camp and took the wreath from him.
Othomar remained alone. The hall stretched long and broad, with darkness at either end. The moon had risen higher, seemed whiter, cast a ghostly glamour over the suits of armour. In the centre, as though in sanctity, between the pious light of the tall candles, rose the catafalque, lay the prince.
The crown-prince mounted two steps of the catafalque and placed his wreath. Then he looked at Berengar's face: no fever distorted it now; it lay peaceful-pale, as though sleeping. All sounds had died away in the hall; a deadly silence reigned. Here the world of sorrow which had filled the palace and the country seemed to have become sanctified in an ecstasy of calm. And Othomar saw himself alone with his soul. The uncertainty of life, the vanity of human intentions were again revealed to him, but more clearly; they were no longer black mystery, they became harmony. It was as though he saw the whole harmony of the past: in all Liparia's historic past, in the whole past of the world there sounded not one false note. All sorrow was sacred and harmonious, tending more closely to the lofty end, which would be in its turn a beginning and never anything but harmony. Resignation descended upon his mood like a spirit of holiness; his strange calmness became resignation. It was as though his nerves were relaxed in one great assuagement.
And his resignation contained only the sadness that never again would he hear the high-pitched little commanding voice of the boy whom he had loved, that this little life had run its course, so soon and for ever. His resignation contained only the surprise that all this was ordered thus and not as he had imagined it. He himself would have to wear the crown which he had wished to relinquish to Berengar. And it now seemed to him as though he himself were receiving it back from the dead boy's hands. This no doubt was why he felt no touch of rebellion in his soul, why he felt this peace, this sense of harmony. His gift was returning to him as a legacy.
Long he stood thus, thinking, staring at his motionless little brother; and his thoughts became simplified within him: he saw lying straight before him the road which he should follow....
Then he heard his name:
"Othomar..."
He looked up and saw the empress at the door. She approached:
"Barzia was asking where you were," she whispered. "He was uneasy about you...."
He smiled to her and shook his head to say no, that he was calm.