It is well pain of spirit has its intermissions; otherwise long life could not be; and if sleep bring them, so much the better.
Next day betimes, the Count was at Blacherne.
"I pray grace, O my Lord!" he said, speaking to the question in the Emperor's look. "Yesterday I had to ride. This confinement in the city deadens me. I rode all day."
The good, easy master sighed: "Would I had been with you, Count."
Thus he dismissed the truancy. But with the Princess it was a lengthy chapter. If the Emperor was never so gracious, she seemed never so charming. He wrote to Mahommed in the evening, and walked the garden the residue of the night.
So weeks and months passed, and March came—even the night of the twenty-fifth, with its order from the Sultan to the White Castle—an interval of indecision, shame, and self-indictment. How many plans of relief he formed who can say? Suicide he put by, a very last resort. There was also a temptation to cut loose from Mahommed, and go boldly over to the Emperor. That would be a truly Christian enlistment for the approaching war; and aside from conformity to his present sympathies, it would give him a right to wear the Princess' favor on his helmet. But a fear shook the resort out of mind. Mahommed, whether successful or defeated, would demand an explanation of him, possibly an accounting. He knew the Sultan. Of all the schemes presented, the most plausible was flight. There was the gate, and he its keeper, and beyond the gate, the sunny Italian shore, and his father's castle. The seas and sailing between were as green landscapes to a weary prisoner, and he saw in them only the joy of going and freedom to do. Welcome, and to God the praise! More than once he locked his portables of greatest value in the cabin of the galley. But alas! He was in bonds. Life in Constantinople now comprehended two of the ultimate excellencies to him, Princess Irene and Christ—and their joinder in the argument he took to be no offence.
From one to another of these projects he passed, and they but served to hide the flight of time. He was drifting—ahead, and not far, he heard the thunder of coming events—yet he drifted.
In this condition, the most envied man in Constantinople and the most wretched, the Sultan's order was delivered to him by Ali.
The time for decision was come. Tired—ashamed—angry with himself, he determined to force the end.
The Count arrived at the Castle, was immediately admitted to the Sultan; indeed, had he been less resolute, his master's promptitude would have been a circumstance of disturbing significance.