The king and Dio were looking down from its flat roof.
"It's all because of me!" he repeated, wringing his hands, or, stretching them out to the combatants, he cried with desperate entreaty.
"Peace! Peace! Peace!"
It was as though he still hoped that men would hear him and stop fighting.
Or he stopped up his ears, covered his face with his hands, so as not to hear, not to see; or, running up to the roof bannisters, bent down and looked greedily at people dying and killing with his name on their lips, and there was such anguish in his face that it seemed as though every sword and spear and arrow pierced his heart as its aim. Or he ran to the staircase door that had been locked, banged it with his fists, and knocked his head against it, shouting:
"Open!"
And when Dio tried to restrain him he struggled out of her arms and begged her, with tears:
"Let me go to them!"
She knew he wanted to throw himself among the combatants so that they should kill him and stop killing one another.
Now and again he suddenly grew quiet and sat down on the floor, muttering something under his breath, quickly and inaudibly, as in delirium. Listening attentively, Dio caught once the words of the incantation the old nurse Asa had said over the dying Princess Maki: