The terrible revelation deprived him of his senses, of his energies, of the desire to live,—and there was little doubt that this would have been Eckhardt's last night on earth, had there not remained one purpose to his life.
How small did even that appear by the magnitude of the crime, which had been visited upon his head. The how and why and when remained as great a mystery to him as ever. Eckhardt's memory roamed back into the years of the past. He tried to recall every word Ginevra had spoken to him; he tried to recall every wish her lips had expressed, he tried to recall every unstinted caress. And with these memories there rose up before his inner eye Ginevra's image and with it there welled up from his heart an anguish so great, that it drove the nails of his fingers deep into the flesh of his clenched hands.
He remembered her strange request never to inquire into her past, but to love her and let his trust be the proof of his love. Then there came floating faintly, like phantoms on the dark waves of his memory, her inordinate desire for power, hinted rather than expressed,—then darkness swallowed, everything else. Only boundless anguish remained, fathomless despair. After a while his feelings suffered a reverse; they changed to a hate of the woman as great as his love had been,—a hate for the fateful siren, Rome, who had deprived him of all that was dearest to him on earth.
Bending his solitary steps towards the Capitol, he saw the veil-like mists gathering above the wild grass, which waves above the palaces of the Cæsars. On a mound of ruins he stood with folded arms musing and intent. In the distance lay the melancholy tombs of the Campagna and the circling hills faintly outlined beneath the pale starlight. Not a breeze stirred the dark cypresses and spectral pines. There was something weird in the stillness of the skies, hushing the desolate grandeur of the earth below.
He had not gone very far when a shadow fell across his path. Looking up he again found himself by the staircase of the Lion of Basalt. The weird relic from the banks of the Nile filled him with a strange dread. With a shudder he paused. Was it the ghastly and spectral light or did the face of the old Egyptian monster wear an aspect as that of life? The stony eye-balls seemed bent upon him with a malignant scowl and as he passed on and looked behind they appeared almost preternaturally to follow his steps. A chill sank into his heart when the sound of footsteps arrested him and Eckhardt stood face to face with the hermit of Gaëta. He beckoned to the monk to accompany him, vainly endeavouring to frame the question, which hovered on his lips. The monk joined him in silence. After walking some little way Nilus suddenly paused, fixing his questioning gaze on the brooding face of his companion. Then a strange expression passed into his eyes.
"Life is full of strange surprises. Yet we cling to it, just to keep out of the darkness through which we know not the way."
Sick at heart Eckhardt listened. How little the monk knew, he thought, and Nilus was staggered at the haggard expression of the Margrave's face, as he stumbled blindly and giddily down the moonlit avenue beside him.
"Would I had never seen her!" Eckhardt groaned. "In what a fair disguise the fiend did come to tempt my soul!"
He paused. The monk drew him onward.
"Come with me to my hermitage! Thou art strangely excited and do what thou mayest,—thou must follow out thy destiny! Hesitate not to confide in me!"