"You speak like some hoary anchorite from the Thebaide. Truly, now I begin to understand, why your chroniclers call you the 'Wonder-child of the World.' Lover, idealist, and cynic in one!"
"Nay—you wrong me! Cynic I am not! My mother was a princess of Greece. The fairest woman my eyes ever gazed upon—save one! She died in her youth and beauty, following my father, the emperor, into his early grave. I was left alone in the world, alone with the monks, alone in the great gloom of our tall and spectral pines! The monks understood not my craving for the sun and the blue skies. The whiter snows of Thuringia chilled my heart and froze my soul! I longed for Rome—I craved for the South. My dead mother's blood flows in my veins. Hither I came, braving the avalanches and the fever and the wrath of the electors, I came, once more to challenge the phantoms of the past from their long forgotten tombs, to make Rome—what once she was—the capital of the earth. Rome's dream is Eternity!"
Stephania listened in silence and with downcast eyes.
Never had the ear of the beautiful Roman heard words like these. The illiteracy, vileness, and depravity of her own countrymen never perhaps presented itself to her in so glaring a contrast, as when thrown into comparison with the ideal son of the Empress Theophano and Otto II, of Saracenic renown. His words were like some strange music, which flatters the senses, that try in vain to retain their harmonies.
There was a pause during which neither spoke.
Otto thought he felt the soft pressure of Stephania's arm against his own.
"You spoke of one who alone might challenge the dead empress in point of fairness," the woman spoke at last and her voice betrayed an emotion which she vainly strove to conceal. "Who is that one?"
"Why do you ask?"
"Theophano's beauty was renowned. Even our poets sing of her."
"I will tell you at some other time."