"Ave Maria—Gratia Plena—Summa parens clementiae—Nocte surgentes—"
Otto had tiptoed to the doors of the chamber and after carefully listening had locked them. The order he had given to admit no one would secure for him a few moments of immunity from interruption from without. Supporting himself against a casement he endeavoured to master the awful agony, which upheaved his soul at the sight of the woman who had played with his holiest affections; he tried to speak once, twice, but his tongue clove to the roof of his mouth. He thought he would choke.
The brazen blast of a trumpet from the battlements of Castel San Angelo caused him to approach and to step behind Stephania. In the now almost continuous glare of the lightning troops could be seen moving slowly along the walls and base of the fortress. The air pealed with acclamations. A thousand arrows from Frisian bowmen swept the defenders from the walls. The battlements were left naked; ladders were raised, ropes were slung, axes were brandished; of every crevice and projection of the wall the assailants availed themselves; they climbed on each other's shoulders, they leaped from point to point; torches without number were now showered on every thing that was combustible. At length a stockade near the central defence took fire.
They fought no longer in darkness. The flames rolled sheet on sheet upon their heads, mingling their glare with that of the blazing horizon. But the issue was no longer doubtful. Castel San Angelo was doomed. No longer it vindicated its claim to being impregnable. The defenders, reduced in number, exhausted by the ever and ever renewed and desperate attacks, staring in the face of certain defeat, were becoming visibly disheartened.
Spellbound, both viewed the spectacle, which unfolded itself to their awe-struck gaze. But there was no flush of victory in Otto's face, no gladness in his eyes as, sick at the sight, he turned away. His eyes returned to the woman whose half-averted face shone out in the glow of the conflagration. Never had it seemed to him so mystic, so unearthly, so fair.
The storm was drawing nearer; the thunder bellowed louder through the heavens, the lightning flashes grew ever brighter; the great bell from the Capitol, the lesser bells of Rome, still shrieked forth their insistent clamour on the sultry air.
She silently drew near him, fixing him with her wondrous eyes.
At that moment the lightning rent the clouds and flashed on her pale face. A peal of thunder, now quite overhead, shook earth and sky, rolling through the air in majestic reverberations. Slowly it died away into the great silence, now again rent and broken by the German catapults, by the renewed shouts of the defenders and assailants. Up to this moment Stephania had still hoped that Castel San Angelo would defy the united assaults of the storming Saxons; suddenly, however, a shriek broke from her lips, she turned away from the window and hid her face in her hands. Then she rushed to where Otto was witnessing the progress of the assault and fell on her knees before him.
"Save him!" she moaned, raising her white clasped hands in despairing entreaty. "Save him! Save him!"
He raised her and, looking into her face, he read therein remorse and helpless entreaty. He knew that the moment was irrevocable for both, final and solemn as death. He felt he must break the pregnant silence, yet no word came to his lips. The more he forced his will, to find a solution, the more conscious he became of his own powerlessness and the depth of the abyss which must divide them for ever more.