"Margrave Eckhardt of Meissen, Commander-in-chief of the German hosts!"
There was the silence of death in the hall.
For a moment Theodora stared fixed and immobile as a marble statue, her face pale as death, while a thin stream of purple wine, spilled from her trembling goblet, trickled down her white, uplifted arm. Then she rushed upon him, and knocking the goblet out of his hand, causing it to fall with a splintering crash at Benilo's feet, she shrieked till the very walls re-echoed the words:
"You lie! You lie!"
Benilo crossed his arms over his chest, and, looking squarely into the woman's eyes, he repeated in the same accents of defiance:
"Margrave Eckhardt of Meissen, Commander-in-chief of the German hosts."
"Again I tell you you lie! You lie!" shrieked the woman, now almost beside herself. "Is there no one among all this scum here assembled, to chastise this viper? Hear me!" she cried as, affrighted, the guests shrank back from her blazing eyes and panting breath, while with all the superhuman beauty of a second Medusa she stood among them, and if her gaze could have killed, none would have survived the hour. "Hear me! Benilo has lied to you, as time and again he has lied to me! He, of whom he speaks, is dead,—has died—long ago!"
Benilo breathed hard. "Then he has arisen from the dead and returned to earth,—to Rome—" he spoke with biting irony in his tones. "A strange hereditary disease affecting the members of his house."
When he saw the deadly pallor which covered the woman's face, and the terror reflected in her eyes, Benilo continued:
"And deem you in all truth, O sagacious Theodora, that a word from the lips of any other man would have caused Vitelozzo to release his prey? Deem you not in your undoubted wisdom that it required a reason, even weightier than the blow of a gauntleted hand, to accomplish this marvellous feat? And,—since you are dumb in the face of these arguments,—will you not enlighten us all why Theodora, the beautiful, the chaste, would deprive him of the plume, to whom it rightfully belongs,—the German commander, Margrave Eckhardt of Meissen, who risked his life to save that of our beautiful queen?"