"Home! Home!" he cries from the depths of his dream; then his voice becomes inarticulate and sinks into silence.
New phantoms crowded each other, a shifting phantasmagoria of the very beings who at that dreadful hour were most vividly fixed in his mind. And among them stood out the image of the woman, who was kneeling at his side, the woman he loved above all women on earth. Again his lips moved. He called her by name, with passionate words of love.
"Let me not die thus, Stephania! Leave me not in this dreary abyss! Oh! Drive away those infernal spectres that stare in my face," and his words became wild and confused, as all these phantoms seemed to rush on him together, forming lurid groups, flaming and tremulous, like prolonged flashes of lightning, but growing fainter and fainter as they died away, when every faculty of the young sufferer seemed utterly suspended.
Dark clouds passed over the moon.
The wind blew in fierce gusts, howling like an imprisoned beast between the chinks of the wall. Then the night relapsed once more into silence, and in intermittent pauses large drops of rain could be heard, splashing from the height of the roof upon the ringing flagstones. To Stephania's listening ear it seemed like a dreadful pacing to and fro of spirits meditating on the past. She dragged herself to a seat in a recess of the wall, whence she could watch the sufferer and minister to his wants.
Another fit of delirium seized Otto. Restlessly he tossed on his pillows. Again a dream murmured his own impending fate into his ears.
Again he is in Aix-la-Chapelle. Again he beholds Charlemagne seated erect in his chair as in that memorable night when he visited the dead emperor in the crypts. He touches the imperial vestments; the crown glitters in the smoky flare of the torches. But through the heavy Arabian perfumes of the emperor's fantastic shroud penetrates the odour of the corpse.
The night wore on.
Recovering consciousness, Otto knew by the dying candle, by the strokes of the clocks from adjacent cloisters, that hours had passed into eternity, and that it was long past midnight. It was very still. The tread of the sentries was no longer heard. Through the window were seen pale blue flashes of lightning in a remote cloudbank, as on that memorable night in the temple of Neptune at Rome. The dull rumbling of distant thunder seemed to come from the bowels of the earth.
His head ached, his mouth was parched, thirst tormented him. He dimly remembered the pitcher of water. Who had removed it? Why had it been taken away? He tried to rise, to drag himself to the wall, but his strength was not equal to the task. He fell back in the cushions where for a time he lay motionless. Then a moan broke from his lips, which startled the figure seated by the bed. Opening his eyes Otto gazed into the pale face of Stephania. She started up with a low cry,—as from a trance. Waking and watching had benumbed her senses.