The duke came in first, and he waited till the others were inside; then he shut the door with lesser violence and rushed over to the chancellor.
"Herbeck, you villain!"
The chancellor stared at the Gipsy, at Von Arnsberg, at Grumbach.
"Herbeck, you black scoundrel!" cried the duke. "Can you realize how difficult it is not to take you by the throat and strangle you here and now?"
"He is mad!" said Herbeck, bracing himself against the desk.
"Yes. I am mad, but it is the sane madness of a terribly wronged man. Come here, you Gipsy!" The duke seized Herbeck's hand and pressed it down fiercely on the desk. "Look at that and tell me if it is not the hand of a Judas!"
"That is the hand, Highness," said the Gipsy, without hesitation.
The duke flung the hand aside. As he did so something snapped in Herbeck's brain, though at that instant he was not conscious of it.
"It was you, you! It was your hand that wrecked my life, yours! Ah, is there such villainy? Are such men born and do they live? My wife dead, my own heart broken, Arnsberg ruined and disgraced! And these two children: which is mine?"
To the king of Jugendheit the ceiling reeled and the floor revolved under his feet.