“Stop!” cried the officer, noticing the action. “I have instructions to prevent your returning, unless you give me the password.” And he deliberately drew a revolver.
Johann gave a groan, and setting spurs to his horse, dashed madly on down the road. As he did so the third carriage came up, halted a moment, and then rolled on beneath the frowning gateway, and was lost to view.
Johann had been seen to leave the Castle by Bernal. Satisfied that the coast was now clear, he repaired to the presence of the Princess Hermengarde, whom he found anxiously awaiting an intimation that the Privy Council was in session.
As he entered her apartments, Prince Ernest went out, looking strangely disturbed.
His mother had just taken the same step with regard to him which the Chancellor had been rash enough to take with regard to Gertrude. But Hermengarde had delayed imparting the secret till the last moment, and it was indispensable that her son’s mind should be prepared before the conspiracy actually took effect.
Knowing his fondness for Maximilian, she dared not give the boy any idea of the motives which were really at work in her mind, but spoke to him as if his cousin’s madness were a fact which she had been forced reluctantly to believe in by convincing medical testimony. Ernest received the terrible revelation with a strange passiveness. At first he seemed hardly to understand the full meaning of the disclosure. When he had taken it in he hung his head as if ashamed, and without offering any comment, stole out of his mother’s presence.
Wearing a dazed surreptitious look, he went on through the rooms which formed the Princess’s quarter of the Castle, and calling his favourite dog to accompany him, made his way round by a back staircase to Maximilian’s apartments.
Here he was interrupted, as Johann had been, by the vigilant Karl. But the Prince brushed him aside.
“I want to see my cousin,” he said. “I know all about it. My mother has just told me. I will see that you are not blamed.”
And Karl not daring to oppose physical resistance, the lad thrust his way past him into Maximilian’s cabinet.