5
In changed uniforms, a short dinner with the high prelate; a few canons and minor ecclesiastics sit down with them. The room is large and sombre, barely lighted with a feeble glimmer of candles; the silver gleams dully on the dressers of old black oak; the frescoes on the walls—sacred subjects—are barely distinguishable. A silent haste quickens the jaws; the conversation is conducted in an undertone; the servants, in their dark livery, move as though on tiptoe. The cardinal, on either side of whom the princes are seated, is tall and thin, with a refined, ascetic face and the steel-blue eyes of an enthusiast; his voice issues from low down in his throat, like that of an oracle; he says something of the Lord's will and makes a submissive gesture with both hands, the fingers lightly outspread, as Jesus does in the old pictures. One of the priests, the cardinal's private secretary, a young man with a round, pink face and soft, white hands, laughs rather loudly at a joke of Prince Dutri, who, sitting next to him, tells a story about a countess in Lipara whom they both know. The cardinal casts a stern glance at the frivolous secretary.
After the hurried dinner, the princes and their suite ride into the town on horseback, cheered wherever they go. The water already mounts close to the cathedral and the Archiepiscopal Palace. Groups of men, women and children, sobbing, flow towards the prince, as he rides across the dark squares; they carry torches about him, as the gas is not everywhere lighted; the ruddy flares look strange, romantic, over the ancient dark mass of the walls and are reflected with long streaks of blood in the water lying in the narrow alleys. A large house of many storeys and rows of little windows appears to have suddenly gone under: a sudden mysterious pressure of water, filtering from the foundations through the masonry of the cellars, making its treacherous way through the least crack or crevice. The inhabitants save themselves in skiffs, which pass with little red lights through the black, watery town; a child cries at the top of its voice. They are poor people there in hundreds, living, packed as in boxes. The princes alight and step into a boat and are rowed to the spot; it becomes known who they are; they themselves help an old woman with three children, all wet to the waist, to climb on to a raft; they themselves give them money, shout instructions to them. And they point to the old fortress of St. Ladislas as a refuge....
But a cry arises, farther on, a cry at first not clearly perceived in the darkness of the evening, then at last distinctly audible:
"The Therezia Dyke! The Therezia Dyke!..."
The princes want to go there; it is not possible on horseback; the only way is in boats. Prince Herman himself grasps the sculls; in the next boat Dutri declares to Von Fest, one of the Gothlandic equerries, that, taken all round, he thinks Venice more comfortable....
"The Therezia Dyke! The Therezia Dyke!..."
The dyke lies like the black back of a great, long beast just outside the town, on the left bank of the Zanthos, and protects the whole St. Therezia district, the eastern portion of the city, which stands tolerably high, from the river, which generally overflows in springtime. The boats glide over the water-streets; a landing is possible in the Therezia Square; lanterns are burning; torches flare, ruddy scintillations dart over the water. The square is large and wide; the houses stand black round about it and surround it in the night with their irregular lines of gables and chimneys, with the massive pile of the church of St. Therezia, whose steeples are lost in the dark sky; in the centre of the square rises a great equestrian statue of a Liparian emperor, gigantic in motionless bronze, stretching one arm, sword in hand, over the petty swarming of the crowd.
Othomar and Herman have sent their three equerries, Dutri, Leoni and Von Fest, for whom horses have been found and saddled, to the dyke, which protects a whole suburb of villas, factories and the St. Therezia railway-station against the waters of the Zanthos, which has already poured its right bank over the country and is drowning it. The princes stand in the middle of the square on the steps of the pedestal of the statue; they would have liked to go on farther, but the mayor himself has begged them to stay where they are: farther on mortal danger threatens at every moment.... All that could be done has been done; there is nothing more to do but wait.
Quarters of an hour, half-hours, pass. This waiting for terrible news calms them; they hope afresh. The officers ride to and fro; the villas and factories yonder are deserted: a whole town lies empty, forsaken. Prince Dutri, turning his horse, which he has ridden out of breath, assures them that the embankment will hold firm; after he has spoken with the princes, he is surrounded: it is the occupiers of the villas, the manufacturers, who overwhelm him with questions, fortified by the self-assurance of the imperial equerry. Dutri gallops off once more.
Now the doors of the church are opened wide, quite wide; at the end of the vista, between the pillars, the tiny lights glitter on the altar; a procession files out slowly: a mitred bishop, priests, acolytes, singing and carrying banners and swinging clouds of smoke from their censers; behind the upraised crucifix, the relics of St. Therezia, in their antique shrine of medieval gold and crystal and precious stones, round or roughly cut; it is borne under a canopy and in the shimmering gleam of candles it glitters and sparkles like a sacred jewel, like a constellation, across that sombre square, through that black night of disaster; flicker the giant emeralds, glitters the precious chased gold and before the Most Holy the crowded populace draws back on either side and falls upon its knees. This is the fifth time to-day that the procession goes its round, that the reliquary is borne on high, to exorcize the calamity. It passes the statue, the princes kneel down; the Latin of the chant, the gleam of the relics in their shrine, the cloud of the incense pass over them with the blessing of the bishop....
The procession has brought stillness to the square, but a murmur now approaches as from afar.... The crowd seems to surge as though in one wave, nobody is now kneeling; the very procession is broken up and confused. Through the throng rushes the report: the dyke has given way!...
They do not yet believe it; but suddenly from above the fort of St. Ladislas, which spreads its ramparts about the castle, a shot thunders out and vibrates over the black city and shakes through the black sky as though its rebound were breaking against the lowering clouds. A second shot thunders after it, as with giant cymbals of catastrophe, a third ... the whole town knows that the Zanthos has broken the dyke.
The whole square is in confused motion, like a swarm of ants; troops of tardy fugitives still come thronging in, poor ones now and indigent, who had not been able to fly earlier, who had been still hoping; through the crush Prince Dutri, panting, cursing, on horseback, terror in his eyes, strives to reach the statue; the distant murmur as of a sea comes nearer and nearer. Men scatter along the streets, on foot or in boats; the disordered procession, with the glitter of its reliquary, seeming to reel on the billows of a human sea, scatters towards the church.
"Is not even the square safe?" asks Othomar.
He can hardly speak, his chest seems cramped as it were with iron, his eyes fill with tears, an immense despair of impotence and pity suffuses his soul.
The mayor shakes his head:
"The square lies lower than the suburbs, highness; you cannot remain here. For God's sake go back to the Episcopal in a boat!..."
But the princes insist on remaining, though the murmur grows louder and louder.
"Go into the church in that case, highnesses: that is the only safe place left," the mayor beseeches. "I beg you, for God's sake!"
The square is already swept clean, the torch-bearers lead the princes to the steps of the church; the Zanthos comes billowing on, like a soft thunder skimming the ground.
Inside the church the organ sounds; they sing, they pray all through the night. And the whole night long everything outside remains chaotically black, gently murmuring....
When the first dawn pales over the sky, which begins in the distance to assume tints of rose and grey, faint opal and mother-of-pearl, Othomar and Herman and the equerries emerge on the steps of the church.
The square stands under water; the houses rise out of the water; the statue of Othomar III. waves its bronze arm and sword over a lake that ripples in the morning breeze.
From the Therezia Square to the Cathedral Square everything lies under water.