Читать книгу The Sorceress of Rome - Gallizier Nathan - Страница 8

At the moment when Benilo had raised his poniard, to drive it through his opponent's heart, the diaphanous curtains dividing the great hall from the rest of the buildings were flung aside and in the entrance there appeared a woman like some fierce and majestic fury, who at a moment's glance took in the whole scene and its import. Her manner was that of a queen, of a queen who was wont to bend all men to her slightest caprice. Every eye in the large hall was bent upon her and every soul felt a thrill of wonder and admiration. The ivory pallor of her face was enhanced by the dark gloss of her raven hair. The slumbrous starry eyes were meant to hold the memories of a thousand love-thoughts. A dim suffused radiance seemed to hover like an aureole above her dazzling white brow, crowning the perfect oval of her face, adorned with a clustering wealth of raven-black tresses. She was arrayed in a black, silk-embroidered diaphanous robe, the most sumptuous the art of the Orient could supply. Of softest texture, it revealed the matchless contours of her form and arms, of her regal throat, heightening by the contrast the ivory sheen of her satin-skin.

But those eyes which, when kindled with the fires of love, might have set marble aflame, were blazing with the torches of wrath, as looking round the hall, she darted a swift inquiring glance at the chief offenders, one of whom could not have spoken had he wished to, for Benilo was fairly strangling him.

The rest of the company had instinctively turned their faces towards the Queen of the Groves, endeavouring at the same time to hide the sight of the dead girl from her eyes by closely surrounding the couch, with their backs to the victim. But their consternation as well as the very act betrayed them. From the struggling men on the floor, Theodora's gaze turned to the affrighted company and she half guessed the truth. Advancing towards her guests, she pushed their unresisting forms aside, raised the cover from the dead girl with the bloody bandage over the still white face, bent over it quickly to kiss the dark, silken hair, then she demanded an account of the deed. One of the women reported in brief and concise terms what had happened before she arrived. At the sight of this flower, broken and destroyed, Theodora's anger seemed for a moment to subside, like a trampled spark, before a great pity that rose in her heart. In an instant the whole company rushed upon her with excited gestures and before the Babel of jabbering tongues, each striving to tell his or her story in a voice above the rest, the Fury returned.

Theodora stamped her foot and commanded silence. At the sight of the woman, Benilo's arms had fallen powerlessly by his side and Roffredo, taking advantage of an unwatched moment, had pushed the Chamberlain off and staggered to his feet.

"Whose deed is this?" Theodora demanded, holding aloft the covering of the couch.

"It was my accursed luck! The decanter was intended for this lying cur, whose black heart I will wrench out of his body!"

And Benilo pointed to the shrinking form of Roffredo.

"What had he done?"

"He had insulted you!"

"That proves his courage!" she replied with a withering glance of contempt.

Then she beckoned to the attendants.

"Have the girl removed and summon the Greek – though I fear it is too late."

There was a ring of regret in her tones. It vanished as quickly as it had come.

The body of Nelida, the dancing girl, was carried away and the guests resumed their seats. Roxané had reluctantly abandoned her usurped place of honour. A quick flash, a silent challenge passed between the two women, as Theodora took her accustomed seat.

"A glass of wine!" she commanded imperiously, and Roffredo, reassured, rushed to the nearest attendant, took a goblet from the salver and presented it to the Queen of the Groves.

"Ah! Thanks, Roffredo! So it was you who insulted me in my absence?" she said with an undertone of irony in her voice, which had the rich sound of a deep-toned bell.

"I said you would embrace the devil, did he but appear in presentable countenance!" Roffredo replied contritely, but with a vicious side glance at Benilo.

An ominous smile curved Theodora's crimson lips.

"The risk would be slight, since I have kept company with each of you," she replied. "And our virtuous Benilo took up the gauntlet?"

Her low voice was soft and purring, yet laden with the poison sting of irony, as through half-closed lids she glanced towards the Chamberlain, who sat apart in moody silence like a spectre at the feast.

Benilo scented danger in her tone and answered cautiously:

"Only a coward will hear the woman he loves reviled with impunity."

Theodora bowed with mock courtesy.

"If you wish to honour me with this confession, I care as little for the one as the other. From your temper I judge some innocent dove had escaped your vulture's talons."

Benilo met the challenge in her smouldering look and answered with assumed indifference:

"Your spies have misinformed you! But I am in no mood to constitute the target of your jests!"

"There is but one will which rules these halls," Theodora flashed out. "If obedience to its mandates is distasteful to you, the gates are open – spread your pinions and fly away!"

She flung back her head and their eyes met.

Benilo turned away, uttering a terrible curse between his clenched teeth.

There was a deep hush in the hall, as if the spirit of the dead girl was haunting the guests. The harps played a plaintive melody, which might indeed have stolen from some hearth of ashes, when stirred by the breath of its smouldering spark, like phantom-memories from another world, that seemed to call to Theodora's inner consciousness, each note a foot-step, leading her away beyond the glint and glitter of the world that surrounded her, to a garden of purity and peace in the dim, long-forgotten past. Theodora sat in a reverie, her strange eyes fixed on nothingness, her red lips parted, disclosing two rows of teeth, small, even, pearly, while her full, white bosom rose and fell with quickened respiration.

"The Queen of the Groves is in a pensive mood to-night," sneered the Lord of Bracciano, who had been engaged in mentally weighing her charms against those of Roxané.

Theodora sighed.

"I may well be pensive, for I have seen to-day, what I had despaired of ever again beholding in Rome – can you guess what it is?"

Shouts of laughter broke, a jarring discord, harshly upon her speech.

"We are perishing with curiosity," shouted, as with one voice, the debauched nobles and their feminine companions.

"In the name of pity, save our lives!" begged a girl nearest to Theodora's seat.

"Can you guess?" the Queen of the Groves repeated simply, as she gazed round the assembly.

All sorts of strange answers were hurled at the throne of the Queen of the Groves. She heeded them not. Perhaps she did not even hear them.

At last she raised her head.

Without commenting on the guesses of her guests, she said:

"I have seen in Rome to-day – a man!"

Benilo squirmed. The rest of the guests laughed harshly and Bembo, the Poet asked with a vapid grin:

"And is the sight so wondrous that the Queen of Love sits dreaming among her admirers like a Sphinx in the African desert?"

"Had he horns?" shouted the Lord of Bracciano.

"Or a cloven hoof?" cried Oliverotto.

"What was he like?" sneered a third.

Theodora turned upon her questioners, a dash of scorn in her barbed reply.

"I speak of a man, not reptiles like you – you all!"

"Mercy, oh queen, mercy!" begged the apoplectic poet, amid the noisy clamour of his jeering companions. But heedless of their jabbering tongues Theodora continued earnestly:

"Not such men as the barons of Rome are pleased to call themselves, cowardly, vicious, – beasts, who believe not in God nor the devil, and whose aim in life is but to clothe their filthy carcass in gaudy apparel and appease the cravings of their lust and their greed! I speak of a man, something the meaning of which is as dark to you as the riddle of the Sphinx."

The company gazed at each other in mute bewilderment.

Theodora was indeed in a most singular mood.

"Are we not at the Court of Theodora?" shouted the Lord of Bracciano, who was experiencing some inconvenience in the feat of embracing with his short arms the two women between whom he was seated. "Or has some sudden magic transported us to the hermitage of the mad monk, who predicts the End of Time?"

"Nay," Benilo spoke up for the first time since Theodora's rebuke had silenced him, "perhaps our beautiful Queen of Love has in store for her guests just such a riddle as the one the Sphinx proposed to the son of Iokasté – with but a slight variation."

The illiterate high-born rabble of Rome did not catch the drift of the Patrician's speech, but the pallor on Theodora's cheeks deepened.

Roxané alone turned to the speaker.

"And the simile?" she asked in her sweet siren-voice, tremulous with the desire to clash with her more beautiful rival.

Benilo shrugged his shoulders, but he winced under Theodora's deadly gaze.

"The simile?" he replied with a jarring laugh. "It is this, that incest and adultery are as old as the Athenian asses, that never died, and that the Sphinx eventually drowned herself in the Aegean Sea."

Theodora made no reply, but relapsed into her former state of thoughtfulness. As she turned from Benilo, her eyes met those of Roxané, and again the two women flashed defiance at each other.

Again the laughter of the revellers rose, louder than before.

"By the Cross," shouted the poet, "the Queen of Love will take the veil."

"Has she chosen the convent, whose nuns she will cause to be canonized by her exemplary life and glorious example," jeered Roxané.

"We shall sing a thousand Aves and buy tapers as large as her unimpeached virtue!" cried another of the women.

"I fear one nunnery is damned from chapel to refectory," growled Benilo, keeping his eyes on the floor, as if fearful of meeting those he instinctively felt burning upon him.

"Silence!" cried Theodora at last, stamping her foot on the floor, while a glow of hot resentment flushed her cheeks. "Your merriment and clamour only draws the sharper line between you and that other, of whom I spoke."

Roffredo looked up with a smile of indolence.

"And who is the demi-god?" he drawled lazily.

She measured him with undisguised scorn and contempt.

"The name! The story!" bellowed several individuals, raising their goblets and half spilling their contents in their besotten mood.

In a strange voice, melodious as the sound of Æolian harps when the night wind passes over their strings, amid profound silence Theodora related to her assembled guests the incident of the runaway steeds in which she had so prominently figured, the chariot having been her own, – the occupant herself. She omitted not a detail of the stranger's heroic deed, passing from her own thrilling experience to Vitelozzo's assault upon one of the New Vestals, and his discomfiture at the hand of him who had saved her life.

"And while your Roman scum hissed and hooted and raised not a finger in the girl's defence, her rescuer alone braved Vitelozzo's fury – I saw him whisper something into the ruffian's ear and the mighty lord skulked away like a frightened cur. By heaven, I have seen a man!" the Queen of the Groves concluded ecstatically, disdaining to dwell on her own rescue.

For a lingering moment there hovered silence on the assembly. Gradually it gave way to a flutter of questions.

"Who is he?" queried one.

"What is he like?" shouted another.

Theodora did not heed the questions. Only her lovely face, framed by hair dark as the darkest midnight, had grown a shade more pale and pensive.

Suddenly she turned to the last questioner, a woman.

"What was he like?" she replied. "Tall, and in the prime of manhood; his face concealed by his vizor."

The woman sighed amorously. The men nodded to each other with meaning glances. The danger of the convent seemed passed.

Benilo, who during Theodora's narrative had proven an ideal listener, of a sudden clenched his fist and gazed round for the harper, who sat in a remote corner of the hall.

Another moment's musing, then the Chamberlain ground his teeth together with the fierce determination to carry out at all hazards, what he had resolved in his mind. Theodora herself was playing into his hands.

"Do you know this incomparable hero, this modern Theseus?" he drawled out slowly and with deliberate impudence, addressing the Queen of the Groves.

Theodora's gaze was sharp as steel.

"What is it to you?" she hissed.

Benilo shrugged his shoulders disdainfully.

"Nothing whatever! I also know him!"

There was something in his tone, which struck the ever-watchful ear of Theodora like a danger-knell.

"You know him?" echoed a chorus of voices from every part of the great hall.

He waved back the eager questioners.

"I know him!" he declared emphatically, then he was silent.

Theodora seemed to have grown nervous.

"Are you serious?"

"Never more so!" Benilo replied, with a slight peculiar hardening of the lips.

"Is he a Roman?" cried a voice.

"All Romans according to our fair Queen's judgment, are curs and degenerates," Benilo drawled insultingly.

Theodora nodded.

"Even so," she replied coldly.

"This demi-god, however, is also slightly known to you," the Chamberlain continued, now fairly facing the Queen of Love, "even though he has not yet found his way to your bowers."

Theodora winced.

"Why do you taunt me?" she flashed back angrily.

Benilo heeded her not. Instead of replying, he addressed himself to the company, speaking in a dry, half-bantering tone, while Theodora watched him like a tigress.

"Once upon a time, the Queen of Love boasted that mortal man did not breathe who would resist her charms. Now there is at this hour one man here in Rome, whom even the matchless Theodora dare not summon to her circle, one man before whose 'No' her vain-glorious boast would break like a bubble, one man whose soul she may not sap and send to hell! And this one man is even the hero of her dreams, her rescuer, – the rescuer of a maiden of spotless virtue, the vanquisher of a giant! Do I speak truth, divine Theodora?"

Those who watched the expression on the face of the Queen of the Groves marvelled alike at Benilo's audacity and the startling absence of a passionate outburst on the part of the woman. And though the blood seethed through Theodora's veins, the sudden change of front on Benilo's part seemed to stagger her for a moment. It was a novel sensation to see the man who had heretofore been like clay in the moulder's hands now daring to flout her openly and to hold up her wounded pride as a target for the jests of those present. It was a novel sensation, to find herself publicly berated, but the shaft sank deep. Theodora's eyes flashed scorn and there was something cruel in her glances. Benilo felt its sting like a whiplash. His nerves quivered and he breathed hard. But he had gone too far to recede. His spirit had risen in arms against the disdain of the woman he loved, – loved with a passion that seemed to have slept in a tomb for ages and suddenly gathered new strength, like a fire kindled anew over dead ashes.

Acting on a sudden impulse, he raised his head and looked at her with a fearlessness which for the moment appeared to startle her self-possession, for a deep flush coloured the fairness of her face and, fading, left it pale as marble. Still Theodora did not speak and the breathless silence which had succeeded Benilo's last taunt resembled the ominous hush of the heated atmosphere before a thunder-clap. No one dared speak and the Chamberlain, apparently struck by the sudden stillness, looked round from the tumbled cushions where he reclined.

"You do not answer my question, fair Theodora," he spoke at last, an undertone of mockery ringing through his speech. "I grant you power over some weak fools," and Benilo glanced round the assembly, little caring for the mutter which his words raised, "but you will at least admit that there is one man in Rome at this very hour, on whom all your charms and blandishments would be wasted as a caress on cold marble."

Another deep and death-like pause ensued; then Theodora's silvery cold tones smote the profound silence with sharp retort, as goaded at last beyond forbearance by his scoffing tone she sprang to her feet.

"There is not a man in Rome," she hissed into Benilo's face, "not in Italy, not in all the world, whom I could not bend to the force of my will. Where I choose, I conquer!"

A sardonic laugh broke from Benilo's lips.

"And by what means?"

"Benilo," she flashed forth in withering contempt, "I know not what your object is in taunting me – and I care not – but by Lucifer, you go too far! Name to me a man in Rome, name whom you will, and if I fail to win him in one month – "

"What then?"

For a moment she hesitated.

"Name the wager yourself!"

An ominous smile curved Benilo's lips.

"All the wealth I possess against you – as my wife!"

She laughed scornfully and shuddered, but did not reply.

"Are you afraid?" he cried, tauntingly.

"What a fate!" she replied with trepidation in her tone. "But I accept it, even it!"

She turned her back on him after a look of such withering contempt as one might cast on some reptile, and took her former seat, when again she was startled by his voice. Its mock caressing tones caused her to clench her firm white hands and bend forward as if tempted to strangle the viper, that had dared to place its glittering coils in her path.

"It now remains but to name the champion, just to prevent the wrong bird from fluttering into the nest," said Benilo, addressing the company.

"The champion! The champion!" they shouted, breathing more freely, since the expected lightning did not strike.

"Fill the goblets!" Benilo exclaimed, and in a moment the wine was poured, the guests arose and gathered round the central figures.

Benilo raised his goblet and turned to Theodora, wincing under her look of contempt.

"The champion is to be my choice and to be accepted unconditionally?" he questioned.

"Not so!" she flashed forth, half rising from her seat, her eyes flaming with wrath. "I would not have my words distorted by so foul a thing as you! It is to be the rescuer of the girl, he before whom the lord Vitelozzo slunk away like a whipped cur! You have taunted me with my lack of power face to face with that one – and that one alone, the only man among a crowd of curs!"

Benilo paused, then he said with a hard, cold smile:

"Agreed!" And he placed the goblet to his lips. The guests did likewise and drank the singular toast, as if it had not implied a glaring insult to each present, including the one who reëchoed it.

"And now for his name!" Benilo continued. "Just to prevent a mischance."

The irony of his words and the implied insult cut Theodora to the quick. With hands tightly clenched as If she would strangle her tormentor, she sprang to her feet.

"I object!" she gasped, almost choked with rage, while her startled listeners seemed to lack even voice to vent their curiosity before this new and unexpected outburst.

"I appeal to the company assembled, who has witnessed the wager between the Queen of Love and her faithful and obedient lover," Benilo sneered, looking round among the guests. "How know we, what is concealed under a vizor, beneath a rusty suit of armour? Security lies but in the name of the unconscious victim of Theodora's magic, is it not so?"

The smile on the Chamberlain's countenance caused him to appear more repulsive than his former expression of wildest rage. But, prompted by an invincible curiosity, the guests unanimously assented.

"Be it so!" gasped Theodora, sinking back in her seat. "I care not."

Benilo watched her closely, and as he did so he almost repented of his hasty wager. Just at that moment his gaze met that of the harper, who stood like some dark phantom behind the throne of the Queen of the Groves, and the Chamberlain stifled the misgivings, which had risen within him. And though smiling in anticipation of the blow he was about to deliver, a blow which should prove the sweetest balm for the misery she had caused him by her disdain, he still wavered, as if to torment her to the extremest limits. Then, with a voice audible in the remotest parts of the great hall, he spoke, his eye in that of Theodora, slowly emphasizing each title and name:

"Margrave Eckhardt of Meissen, Commander-in-chief of the German hosts!"

There was the silence of death in the hall.

For a moment Theodora stared fixed and immobile as a marble statue, her face pale as death, while a thin stream of purple wine, spilled from her trembling goblet, trickled down her white, uplifted arm. Then she rushed upon him, and knocking the goblet out of his hand, causing it to fall with a splintering crash at Benilo's feet, she shrieked till the very walls re-echoed the words:

"You lie! You lie!"

Benilo crossed his arms over his chest, and, looking squarely into the woman's eyes, he repeated in the same accents of defiance:

"Margrave Eckhardt of Meissen, Commander-in-chief of the German hosts."

"Again I tell you you lie! You lie!" shrieked the woman, now almost beside herself. "Is there no one among all this scum here assembled, to chastise this viper? Hear me!" she cried as, affrighted, the guests shrank back from her blazing eyes and panting breath, while with all the superhuman beauty of a second Medusa she stood among them, and if her gaze could have killed, none would have survived the hour. "Hear me! Benilo has lied to you, as time and again he has lied to me! He, of whom he speaks, is dead, – has died – long ago!"

Benilo breathed hard. "Then he has arisen from the dead and returned to earth, – to Rome – " he spoke with biting irony in his tones. "A strange hereditary disease affecting the members of his house."

When he saw the deadly pallor which covered the woman's face, and the terror reflected in her eyes, Benilo continued:

"And deem you in all truth, O sagacious Theodora, that a word from the lips of any other man would have caused Vitelozzo to release his prey? Deem you not in your undoubted wisdom that it required a reason, even weightier than the blow of a gauntleted hand, to accomplish this marvellous feat? And, – since you are dumb in the face of these arguments, – will you not enlighten us all why Theodora, the beautiful, the chaste, would deprive him of the plume, to whom it rightfully belongs, – the German commander, Margrave Eckhardt of Meissen, who risked his life to save that of our beautiful queen?"

Theodora turned upon her tormenter like an animal at bay.

"I have heard enough! I will not! The wager is off!"

And rising she prepared to leave the hall without another word.

It would have been difficult for the most profound physiognomist to analyze Benilo's feelings, when he saw his purpose, his revenge, foiled. Looking up he met the enigmatic gaze of the harper resting upon him with a strange mixture of derision and disdain.

"Stay!" Benilo cried to Theodora as she grasped the curtain in the act of pushing it aside. He knew if she passed beyond it, he had lost beyond retrieve. But she paused and turned, mute inquiry and defiance in her look.

"The Queen of the Groves has made a wager before you all," the Chamberlain shouted, lashing himself into the rage needful to make him carry out his design unflinchingly. "After being informed of the person of the champion she has repudiated it! The reasons are plain, – the champion is beyond her reach! The Queen of the Groves is too politic to play a losing game, especially when she knows that she is sure to lose! The charms of our Goddess are great, but alas! There is one man in Rome whom she dare not challenge!"

He paused to study the effect of his words upon her.

She regarded him with her icy stare.

"It is not a question of power – but of my will!"

"So be it!" retorted Benilo. "But since the Queen of Love has refused my wager for reasons no doubt good and efficient, perhaps there is in this company one less pure, one less scrupulous, one of beauty as great, who might win, where Theodora shuns the risk! Will you take up the gauntlet, fair Roxané, and lure to the Groves, Eckhardt, the general?"

"Benilo – beware!"

Shrill, sharp like breaking glass, like the cry of a wounded animal maddened with rage and agony, the outcry seemed wrenched from Theodora's white, drawn lips. Her large, splendid eyes flashed unutterable scorn upon the Chamberlain and her lithe form swayed and crouched as that of a tigress about to spring.

"Will Roxané take the wager?" Benilo repeated defiantly.

The anticipation of the on-coming contest caused Roxané's cheek to blanch. But not to be thought deficient in courage, to meet her rival, she replied:

"Since the Queen of the Groves shuns the test, perhaps I might succeed, where – "

She did not finish the sentence.

Like a lightning flash Theodora turned from the man, who had roused her ire, to the woman who had stung her pride with ill-veiled mockery, and while she slowly crept towards her opponent, her low voice, tremulous with scorn, stung as a needle would the naked flesh.

"And do you dream that Eckhardt of Meissen has aught to fear from you, fair Roxané? Deem you, that the proud Roxané with all her charms, could cause the general of the German host to make one step against his will?"

For a moment the two women stood face to face, measuring each other with deadly looks.

"And what if I would?" flashed Roxané.

Two white hands slowly but firmly encircled her throat.

"I would strangle you!" hissed Theodora, her face deadly pale.

Roxané's cheeks too had lost their colour. She knew her opponent and she instinctively felt she had reached the limit. She gave a little nervous laugh as she drew Theodora's reluctant hands from the marble whiteness of her throat, where their touch had left a rosy imprint.

"I do not wish your Saxon bear," she said. "If you can tame him, we come to his skin!"

"By Lucifer!" replied the Queen of the Groves, "did I but choose to, I would make him forget heaven and hell and bring him to my feet!"

"How dramatic!" sneered Benilo. "Words are air! We want proofs!"

She whirled upon him.

"And what will become of the snake, when the hunter appears?"

Benilo paled. For a moment his arrogance deserted him. Then he said with an ominous scowl:

"Let the hunter beware!"

She regarded him with icy contempt. Then she turned to the revellers.

"Since Benilo has dared to cross swords with me," she cried, "though I despise him and all of you, I accept the challenge, if there is one in this company who will confirm that it was Eckhardt who discomfited Vitelozzo."

From the background of the hall, where he had sat a silent listener, there came forward an individual in the gaudy attire of a Roman nobleman. He was robust and above the middle height, and the lineaments of his coarse face betrayed predominance of brute instincts over every nobler sentiment.

"Vitelozzo! Vitelozzo!" the guests shouted half amazed, half amused.

The robber-baron nodded as he faced Theodora on the edge of the circle.

"I have listened to your discourse," he snarled curtly. "For your opinions I care not. And as for the skullion to whom I gave in, – out of sheer good will, – ha, ha! – may the devil pull the boots from his legs! – 'twas no meaner a person than he, at whose cradle the fiend stood sponsor, Eckhardt – the general – but I will yet have the girl, I'll have her yet!"

And with a vigorous nod Vitelozzo took up a brimming decanter and transported himself into the background whence he had arisen.

His word had decided the question.

For a moment there was an intense hush. Then Theodora spoke:

"Eckhardt of Meissen, the commander of the German hosts, shall come to my court! He shall be as one of yourselves, a whimpering slave to my evil beauty! I will it, – and so it shall be!"

For a moment she glanced at Benilo and the blood froze in his veins. Heaven and earth would he have given now to have recalled the fateful challenge. But it was too late. For a time he trembled like an aspen. No one knew what he had read in Theodora's Medusa-like face.

Some of the revellers, believing the great tension relieved, now pushed eagerly forward, surrounding the Queen of the Groves and plying her with questions. They were all eager to witness a triumph so difficult to achieve, as they imagined, that even Theodora, though conscious of her invincible charms, had winced at the task.

But the Queen of Love seemed to have exchanged the attributes of her trade for those of a Fury, for she turned upon them like an animal wounded to death, that sees the hounds upon its track and cannot escape.

"Back! All of you!" she hissed, raising her arms and sweeping them aside. "What is it after all? Is he not a man, like – no! Not like you, not like you! – Why should I care for him? – Perhaps he has wife and child at home: – the devils will laugh the louder!"

She paused a moment, drawing a deep breath. Then she slowly turned towards the cringing Chamberlain. Her voice was slow and distinct and every word struck him as the blow from a whip.

"I accept your wager," she said, "and I warn you that I will win! Win, with all the world, with all your villainy, with the Devil himself against me. Eckhardt shall come to the Groves! But," she continued with terrible distinctness, "if aught befall him, ere we have stood face to face, I shall know the hand that struck the blow, were it covered by the deepest midnight that ever blushed at your foulness, and by the devil, – I will avenge it!"

After these words Theodora faced those assembled with her splendid height in all the glory of her beauty. Another moment she was gone.

For a time deep silence succeeded.

Never had such a scene been witnessed in the Groves. Never had the Queen of Love shown herself in so terrible a mood. Never had mortal dared to brave her anger, to challenge her wrath. Truly, the end of time must be nigh when her worshippers would dare defy the Goddess of the Shrine.

But after Theodora had disappeared, the strain gradually relaxed and soon wore away entirely. With all, save Benilo. His calm outward demeanour concealed only with an effort his terrible apprehensions, as he mixed freely, to divert suspicion, with the revellers. These thought the moments too precious to waste with idle speculations and soon the orgy roared anew through the great hall.

Benilo alone had retreated to its extreme end, where he allowed himself to drop into a divan, which had just been deserted by a couple, who had been swept away by the whirling Bacchanale. Here he sat for some time, his face buried in his hands, when looking up suddenly he found himself face to face with Hezilo.

"I have done it," he muttered, "and I fear I have gone too far!"

He paused, scanning the harper's face for approval. Its expression he could not see, but there was no shade of reproof in the voice which answered:

"At best you have but erred in the means."

"I wished to break her pride, to humble her, and now the tables are turned; it is I, who am grovelling in the dust."

"No woman was by such means ever wooed or won," the harper replied after a brief pause. "Theodora will win the wager. But whether she win or lose, she will despise you for ever more!"

Benilo pressed his hands against his burning temples.

"My heart is on fire! The woman maddens me with her devilish charms, until I am on the verge of delirium."

"You have been too pliant! You have become her slave! Her foot is on your neck! You have lost yourself! Better a monstrous villain, than a simpering idiot, who whines love-ditties under his lady's bower and bellows his shame to the enduring stars! Dare to be a man, – despite yourself!"

So absorbed was Benilo in his own thoughts, that the biting irony of the other's speech was lost upon him.

He extended his hand to his strange counsellor.

"It shall be as you say: The Rubicon is passed. I have no choice."

The stranger nodded, but he did not touch the proffered hand.

At last the Chamberlain rose to leave the hall.

The sounds of lutes and harps quivered through the Groves of Theodora; flutes and cymbals, sistrum and tympani mingled their harmonies with the tempest of sound that hovered over the great orgy, which was now at its height. The banquet-hall whirled round him like a vast architectural nightmare. Through the dizzy glare he beheld perspectives and seemingly endless colonnades. Everything sparkled, glittered, and beamed in the light of prismatic irises, that crossed and shattered each other in the air. Viewed through that burning haze even the inanimate objects seemed to have waked to some fantastic representation of life. – But through it all he saw one face, supremely fair in its marble cold disdain, – and unable to endure the sight longer Benilo the Chamberlain rushed out into the open.

In the distance resounded the chant of pilgrims traversing the city and imploring the mercy and clemency of heaven.