Why had that man hated him, tried to murder him, tried to slay him like a beast?... Pride welled up in him, pride and despair. The man had touched him, soiled him with his breath, him, the crown-prince, the Duke of Xara! He gnashed his teeth with rage. That was a thing which Berengar I. would never have suffered! Off with his head! Off with his head!... Oh, that populace which did not know, which did not feel, which pressed up against him, seething and foaming against the throne, which terrified his mother, however haughtily she might look beyond it into the distance, with her imperial composure!...
How he hated it, hated it, with all the hatred of his house for those who were now free and were yet once its slaves! How he would have them shot down, have them shot down when he came into power!...
He looked at Xaveria: she herself was shot down, the haughty amazon; backwards she fell, wounded by the arrow of a Turkish soldier. And he, that morning, if Von Fest had not....
He threw himself back wildly, buried his face in his hands and sobbed. No, no, oh no! He would not shoot them down, not kill them, not hate them! He was not like that: he might be like that for a moment, but he was not like that! He was fond of his people; he was so grateful when they rejoiced, when he was able to help them. Surely he would never have them shot on! He was only growing excited now. What was there in his soul for all of them, for those millions, of whom he had perhaps seen only a few thousands and knew only a few hundreds, but one great love, which threw out arms to them in every direction, to embrace them? Had he not felt this in that black night on the Therezia Square? Were hatred and violence his? No, oh no! He was soft, perhaps too soft, too irresolute, but he would grow older, he would grow stronger; he would wish to and he would make all of them happy. Oh, if they only cared for him, if they only loved him with their great mass of surging, black, frothing humanity, a sable Milky Way of swarming souls, each soul a spark, like his own; oh, if they only loved him! But they must not hate him, not look at him with those bloodshot eyes of hatred, not aim at his throat with those coarse, hairy fingers, not try to murder him, O God, not try to slay him like a bullock, with a common knife, him, their future sovereign!...
And he felt that they did not belong to him and did not know him and did not understand him and did not love him, all of them, and that they hated him merely out of instinct, because he was born upon the throne!
And his despair because of all this spanned out, immense, a desert of black night, which he felt eternities wide around him; and he sobbed, sobbed, like an inconsolable child, because this was as it was and would become more desperate with each day that brought him nearer to his future as emperor and to their future: the mournful day which would rise upon the destruction of the old world....
Then there came a knock at a little door; and the door was softly opened....
"Who's there?" he asked, startled, feeling the breach of etiquette, not understanding why Andro had not come through the anteroom to announce whoever it might be.
"If your highness permits me...."
He recognized the duchess' soft voice, rose, went to the door: