Still there was the same silence! He turned his head and started back in horror. Hillin was dead, his hand still held the pen, his arms rested on the table, and his head had fallen forward upon the parchment.
Shaking his head in astonishment, Dassel walked towards the corpse and then called for his servants. His fear had passed away, for the Chancellor was not easily agitated.
"Hillin is dead," he said; "the young man had fine prospects, and would have been useful; but dead, he is only a nuisance. Take away this carcass!"
At this moment the Emperor sent for him, and Rinaldo, throwing into the fire the now useless letter, dressed himself in his court-robes and repaired to his master's presence.
Frederic's face was sad and calm. He replied to his minister's bow with a mute smile, and motioned him to a seat.
"Chancellor," he said; "we have done all that is possible. But Heaven seems inexorable; the plague rages with renewed fury; two-thirds of my army have perished, and if we remain here longer, the remainder will share their fate."
"Still we must stay here. Our flight will only aggravate our condition; I have foreseen all this. The plague will cease as unexpectedly as it began."
"But if it really were a chastisement from God?" said Barbarossa.
Rinaldo sneered viciously: he looked steadily at the Emperor for a moment, and then answered,--
"We must then suppose that God amuses himself by punishing the Romans every year; for every year the heat raises these noxious vapors from the marshes, and breeds a pestilential fever; it is an unhealthy climate, that is all that can be said."