There were grave reports from Macedonia. Houses were being burned and convoys pillaged. All the villages from Kassovo to Monastir were in ebullition. Bands of bashi-bazouks had come as far as the Drina. It would be necessary to go back. The duke saw it clearly—great events were preparing.
“You were present, I believe,” the duke said to Caracal, “when I spoke at Phil’s place of the old sorceress, who is a prophetess for some and a saint for others, and has more influence in the country than all the journalists in the world could have. This old woman predicts the future. I assure you, Caracal, she foretells astonishing things, absolutely amazing, and I myself have seen them realized many times over. Just now she is upsetting the country with talk about the return of Morgana.”
“But there’s no harm in that,” Caracal remarked.
“She excites the people, and it will end in war, that’s all!” answered the duke, gravely. “Ah! the prophetess and her prophecies—they are a load upon my back, I can tell you!”
“Why don’t you shut her up in a madhouse?”
“That’s more easily said than done,” observed the duke. “An old woman adored by an entire people—you may not believe me, but—I assure you—she’s stronger than I!”
Caracal looked at the duke to see if he was in earnest. But a duke’s psychology was entirely beyond his ken, subtle observer as he was. The duke’s animosity against the sorceress had a look of embroilment between sovereigns.
While the prospect of all these troubles alienated the duke from Morgania, so a creature dear to his heart attracted him homeward. This was his only child, his son, the little Duke Adalbert. All the duke’s affections were centered upon this son, after the death of the duchess. It had not been a happy marriage. First of all, his wife had made him take a dislike to his people. She was an Austrian archduchess—more than an aristocrat, an Olympian; and the fall from the elegance of Vienna life to severe duties in Morgania filled her with bitterness. She detested her subjects, and they paid her back the compliment. Never had a duchess been so unpopular.
Until then,—not to speak of the heroine who had founded the glory of the house,—all the duchesses had had the gift of pleasing the people, perhaps because most of them were themselves sprung from the people. Love’s fancies had reigned in the house of Tagliaferro, and, thanks to such spontaneousness of feeling, misalliances had not been rare. Just as at the Austrian court Archduke Henry, the emperor’s nephew, had espoused a dancing-girl who became Baroness Weideck, and before him Archduke John had married the pretty Anna Plochel, a postmaster’s daughter, so the Dukes of Morgania, with aristocratic loftiness, chose their consorts wherever it seemed good to them.
Such duchesses the people of Morgania preferred to all others. It was very important for the future of the house that she who was to succeed the mother of Adalbert should possess all those qualities which make a woman adorable—goodness, beauty, and valor.