"I--I have not time," muttered Sterzl with a fixed vacant stare; and, as he spoke, he shot past Siegburg; but his gait was unsteady and he ran up against a passer-by.
"What on earth ails him?" said Siegburg looking after him. "I thought he would be pleased and--well! the ways of man are past finding out. This marriage will create a sensation in Vienna, eh, general? But I approve--I entirely approve. We are on the threshold of a new era, as Schiller--or some one has said, Bismarck very likely--and we shall live to tell our children how we stood by and looked on. But what is the matter with you both--you and Sterzl? To be sure--you were coming from the Palazzo di Venezia--have Nicki and Sterzl quarrelled--a challenge!" The general nodded. "But it can be amicably arranged now," said Siegburg consolingly.
CHAPTER VI.
On his return home Sterzl found Sempaly's note of the day before. The porter had taken it, as he was ordered, to the secretary's office, but as Sterzl had not gone there all day it had lain unopened; till, this morning, one of the messengers had thought it well to bring it to the palazetto. Sterzl read it and hid his face in his hands.
Within a short time Sempaly's seconds were announced--Siegburg and a military attaché from the Russian embassy.
No, it could not be amicably arranged--under the circumstances there was but one way of satisfying the point of honor. This point of honor--what is it? A social dogma of the man of the world, and the whole creed of the southern aristocrat.
Sterzl was to start that night by the eleven o'clock train for Vienna, on matters of business, before setting out for Constantinople. The affair must therefore be settled at once. Beyond fixing the hour Sterzl left everything to his seconds. Swords, at seven that evening, among the ruins opposite the tomb of the Metellas was finally agreed on.
Soon after six, Sterzl and his seconds set out. The carriage bore them swiftly along, through the gloomy, stuffy streets which lead to the Forum, along the foot of the Palatine, and past the Colosseum, through the arch of Constantine into the Via Appia, on and on, between grey moss-grown walls, over which they caught glimpses of ruins and tall dark cypresses. Then the walls disappeared and bushy green hedge-rows, covered with creepers, bordered the road, and presently the Campagna lay before them, an endless, rolling, green carpet, with its attractive melancholy, and the poisonous beauty of orchids and asphodels with which each returning spring decks its waste monotony, like a wilderness in a fevered dream.
Sterzl sat in silence on the back seat, facing his two friends. He did not even pretend to be cheerful. A brave man may sometimes face death with indifference, but hardly with a light heart. Death is a great king to whom we must need do homage. His soul was heavy; but his two companions, who knew not only his staunch nature but all the circumstances of the duel, knew that it was not from anxiety as to his own fate. He could not forget that this catastrophe was, at last, due solely and entirely to his own violence and loss of self-command. He never once reflected that this engagement--brought about by a series of makeshifts and accidents--could hardly have resulted in a happy marriage; he had forgotten Sempaly's sins and remembered one thing only: that his sister might have had the moon she had longed for, and that he alone had snatched it from her grasp.
A powerful fragrance filled the air, coming up from the orchids, from the blossoming hedges, from the fresh greenery of the gardens, like the very soul of the spring, bringing a thousand memories to his brooding brain and aching heart. It reminded him of the great untended orchard at home, and of one morning in the last May he had spent there before going to school. The apple-trees were clothed with rosy blossom; butterflies were flitting through the air, and the first forget-me-nots peeped bluely among the trailing brambles on the brink of the brook that danced across the garden, murmuring sleepily to the shadowy, whispering alders. There was a fragrance of the soil, of the trees, of the flowers--just as there was now--and Zinka, then a mere baby, had come tripping to meet him and had said with her little confidential and important air: