“Her Royal Highness the Regent—until they serve you.”
No man could be quite insensible to all that this implied of kingly power, and the traditional homage of inherited devotion, the hot love for him who was born their chief—given them of God, and their own before all others. The Archduke’s fingers closed a bit tighter on his stick, his blood pulsed faster, and the stubborn spirit of old Hugo awoke to new life; and in that moment, in the dead of night, with the rain whipping around them, as it wrapped the city in a cloud of glowing mist, he turned his face forever from his old life, its memories and methods, and passed finally into the New, its high destiny, its privileges, its responsibilities, its dangers and its cares. He would make this fight in the Duke’s own fashion, and end it in the Duke’s own way; if he fell in the ending, he would see to it that the Duke fell first; not that he cared for his company in the out-going—though, doubtless, it would matter little then—but because it were not well to leave him behind to plague the kingdom with his viciousness.
They now had left the more modern portion of the Avenue and were in the older section, where the houses were smaller and stood only a little way from the sidewalk; though occasionally a more pretentious one was set far back, with trees and shrubbery around it, and a wall before, hiding it almost entirely from the street.
In front of one of these residences, the Archduke suddenly stopped and caught Bernheim’s arm.
“Listen!” he said, “I heard a cry.”
Bernheim, too, had heard it, but he was not minded to let his master know.
“It was the wind, doubtless, sir,” he said.
“No, it wasn’t the wind—it was a voice, and a woman’s voice, I thought.”
A blast of rain and mist swept by them and through the trees, stirring the leaves into a rustling as of the sighs of disembodied spirits, while the swaying street lights flung the shadows hither and thither like pursuing cerecloths struggling to re-shroud them in their forsaken garb.
Bernheim looked around to fix the location.