"You have taken a grave responsibility," he said sternly.
"And I trust your Majesty will visit on me alone the consequences," I answered earnestly. "This unfortunate girl had scarcely any one round her but those who were plotting to betray her, and it will be a strange irony if I, who at least was loyal to her, have brought her under the heavy lash of your Majesty's displeasure."
I spoke with warm feeling, and went on to put such reasons as my fear and love for Minna prompted why any penalty for what had been done should fall on me.
And as I spoke I watched the Emperor with eager, hungry keenness for some sign that my pleading was likely to prevail. But not a feature was relaxed for an instant, not a sign or token did he give of feeling. The face retained the same set, impassive, inflexible, gloomy sternness which he had maintained throughout. He heard me to the end, but made no response or reply.
There remained then but one thing more for me to say, one more avowal to make, and I thought of it with something like foreboding. He seemed so cold, so unimpressionable, so infinitely removed from me, that I could not bring myself to hope that any good would result from my declaring my identity. There appeared no chords of old friendship, no associations of comradeship to reawaken. But there was at least the chance that it would convince him I had spoken the truth.
He appeared to me as the type and embodiment of cold, rarefied, unemotional intellectuality. Judgment founded on justice, but feelingless; mind, not heart; the very presentment of retributive righteousness without the warmth of charity. A man who had accepted the high mission of his rulership in a spirit of unshakable faith in the heavenly character of the mission, but who in accepting it had bound down with the iron clamps of an implacable will the milder attributes which go to make humanity human.
Who was to say what would be the effect of an avowal like mine which, like a sudden sword-thrust, might pierce for once his armor of inflexibility and set flowing again the blood of his older nature?
It was he who touched the subject first, and in the form which I had anticipated. He broke a long pause to say:
"You have spoken freely enough, but what is the guarantee of your truth?"
I paused an instant, and, looking him straight in the face, I answered, with slow emphasis: