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A wild shriek resounded through the cavern.

Eckhardt trembled at the sound of his own despair.

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

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

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

In vain he tried to order his chaotic thoughts.

Monstrous deception she had practised upon him!

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

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

And all for what?

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

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

Like one dazed he returned to his palace.

But he could not sleep.

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

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

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

It could not be excluded.

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

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

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

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

Calmer!

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

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

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

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

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

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

He was on the verge of madness.

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER VII
ARA COELI

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Why are you here?"

He met her gaze eye in eye.

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

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

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

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

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

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

She looked at him amusedly.

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

Otto pointed to the Capitoline hill.

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

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

Otto shook his head.

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

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

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

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

There was a pause.

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

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

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

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

She shook her head but avoided his gaze.

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

Otto drew himself up to his full height.

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

Suddenly a strange thought came over him.

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

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

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

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

"Stephania!"

"Tell me that you hate me."

"Stephania – why do you ask it?"

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

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

She gazed at him with moist, glorious eyes.

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

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

"Can you ask?"

"Wholly?"

"What do you mean?"

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

"What malady?"

"Distrust."

There was a pause.

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

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

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

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

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

He gazed upon her with burning eyes.

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

She pointed in silence to the entrance of the temple.

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

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

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

The woman was very pale.

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

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

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

"The fallen angels," was her smiling reply.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"He has seen nothing," Otto reassured her.

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

They faced each other in a dead silence.

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

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

But the woman became strong as he grew weak.

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

He dropped her hands, his eyes in hers.

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

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

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

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

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

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