With a wild shriek of terror, Theodora had risen to her feet—then she sank back on the couch staring speechlessly at what was passing before her. The gaunt form of a monk, clad in the habit of the hermits of Mount Aventine, had rushed into the grotto, just as Eckhardt fell from the effect of the drug. Lifting him up, as if he were a mere toy, the monk rushed out into the open and disappeared with his burden, while four eyes followed him in speechless dread and dismay.
CHAPTER III
THE ELIXIR OF LOVE
t was late on the following evening, when in the hermitage of Nilus of Gaëta, Eckhardt woke from the death-like stupor which had bound his limbs since the terrible scenes of the previous night. Thanks to the antidotes applied by the friar as soon as he reached the open, the deadly effect of the poison had been stemmed ere it had time to penetrate Eckhardt's system, but even despite this timely precaution, the benumbing effect of the drug was not to be avoided, and during the time when the stupor maintained its sway Nilus had not for a moment abandoned the side of his patient. A burning thirst consumed him, as he awoke. Raising himself on his elbows and vainly endeavouring to reconcile his surroundings, the monk who was seated at the foot of his roughly improvised bed rose and brought him some water. It was Nilus himself, and only after convincing himself that the state of the Margrave's condition was such as to warrant his immediately satisfying the flood of inquiries addressed to him, did the hermit go over the events of the preceding night, starting from the point where Eckhardt had lost consciousness and his own intervention had saved him.
Eckhardt's hand went to his head which still felt heavy and ached. His brain reeled at the account which Nilus gave him, and there was a choking dryness in his throat when the friar accused Theodora of the deed.
"For such as she the world was made. For such as she fools and slaves abase themselves," the monk concluded his account. "Pray that your eyes may never again behold her accursed face."
Eckhardt made no reply. What could he say in extenuation of his presence in the groves? And by degrees, as consciousness and memory returned, as he strained his reasoning faculties in the endeavour to find some cause for the woman's attempt to poison him, after having mocked him with her fatal likeness to Ginevra—his most acute logic could not reconcile her actions. For a moment he tried to persuade himself that he was in a dream, and he strove in vain to wake from it. It was amazing in what brief time and with what vividness all that could render death terrible, and this death of all most terrible, rushed upon his imagination. Despite the languor and inertness which still continued, one terrible certainty rose before him. Far from having solved the mystery, it had intensified itself to a degree that seemed to make any further attempt at solution hopeless. During the twilight consciousness of his senses numerous faces swam around him,—but of all these only one had remained with him, Ginevra's pale and beautiful countenance, her sweet but terrible eyes. But the ever-recurring thought was madness.—Ginevra was dead.
But the hours spent in the seclusion of the friar's hermitage were not entirely lost to Eckhardt. They ripened a preconceived and most fantastic plan in his mind, which he no sooner remembered, than he began to think seriously of its execution.
A second night spent in Nilus's hermitage had sufficiently restored Eckhardt's vitality to enable him to leave it on the following morning. After having taken leave of the monk, confessing himself his debtor for life, the Margrave chose the road toward the Imperial palace, as his absence was likely to give rise to strange rumours, which might retard or prevent the task he had resolved to accomplish. He was in a state bordering on nervous collapse, when he reached the gates of the palace, where the Count Palatine, in attendance, ushered him into an ante-room pending his admission to Otto's presence. Eckhardt's thoughts were gloomy and his countenance forbidding as he entered, and he did not notice the presence of Benilo, the Chamberlain. When the latter glanced up from his occupation, his countenance turned to ashen hues and he stared at the leader of the imperial hosts as one would at an apparition from the beyond. The hands, which held a parchment, strangely illuminated, shook so violently that he was compelled to place the scroll on the table before him. Eckhardt had been so wrapt in his own dark ruminations that he saw and heard nothing, thus giving Benilo an opportunity to collect himself, though the stereotyped smile on the Chamberlain's lips gave the lie to his pretense of continuing interested in the contents of the chart which lay on the table before him.