"Not for all the lands on which the sun sets to-night will I refuse obedience to Stephania's call," Otto replied. "You sorely mistake your place and presume too much on the authority placed into your hands by the august Empress, my mother. But attempt not to exercise mastery over your King or to bend him to your will and purpose—for he will do as he chooses!"
"It has come to this then," replied Eckhardt without stirring from the spot and utterly disregarding Otto's increasing nervousness. "It has come to this! Are there no chaste and fair maidens in your native land? Maidens of high birth and lineage, fit to adorn an emperor's couch? Must you needs come hither,—hither,—to this thrice accursed spot, to love an alien, to love a Roman, and of all Romans, a married woman—the wife of your arch-enemy, the Senator? Are you blind, King Otto? Can you not see the game? You alone—of all? Deem you the proud, merciless Stephania, the consort of the Senator, who hates us Teutons more than he does the fiend himself,—would meet you here in this secluded spot, with her husband's knowledge,—with her husband's connivance,—simply to listen to your dreams and vagaries? Can you not see that you are but her dupe? King Otto, you have refused to listen to my warnings:—there is sedition rife in Rome. Retire to the Aventine, bar the gates to every one,—I have despatched my fleetest messenger to Tivoli to recall our contingents,—before dawn my Saxons shall hammer at the gates of Rome!"
Otto gazed at the speaker as if the latter addressed him in some unknown tongue.
"Sedition in Rome?" he replied like one wrapt in a dream. "You are mad! The Romans love me! Even as I do them! I will not stir an inch! I remain!"
Eckhardt breathed hard. He must carry his point; he felt oppressed by the sense of a great danger.
"And thus it befalls," he said laughing aloud with the excess of bitterness, "that to this hour I owe the achievement of knowing the cause why you have declined the demands of the Electors; that I can bear to them the answer to their importunities; that in this hour I have learned the true reason of your refusing to listen to your German subjects, who crave your return, who love you and your glorious house! You say you will remain! Revel then in your Eden, until she is weary of you and Crescentius spares her the pains of the finish."
"What are you raving?" exclaimed Otto furiously.
"You are mad for love, King Otto, and a frenzied lover is the worst of fools!"
The King blushed, with the consciousness either of his innocence or guilt.
"Since you accuse me," he spoke more calmly, but a strange fire burning in his eyes, "I do not deny it,—Stephania requested a meeting on matters pertaining to Rome, and I have come! And here," Otto continued, inflexible determination ringing in his tones—"and here I will await her, if all hell or the swords of Rome barred the way. Do you hear me, Eckhardt? Too long have I been the puppet of the Electors. Too long have I suffered your tyranny. My will is supreme,—and who so defies it, is a traitor!"