"Albo!" cried the queen, and threw herself upon the arm of her trembling daughter.
"You have not forgotten me, sire!" answered the lady, earnestly and firmly. "For many years I have been unaccustomed to this name, and just here where it is proscribed I hear it again. Your presence, sire, decides my fate, which I would have intrusted to friendly hands. Unjustly banished from your state, I know only too well that I stand before you now as a criminal. I have stepped over the ban, and death is my fate. Dispose of this gray head as you will, only protect my grand-daughters, my king! Their mother has departed. They do not bear the hated name of Albo. Let them live in the home of their mother, to plant flowers on mine and their uncle's grave."
For a long time the king made no reply, but his expression was dark and menacing.
"I am no tyrant who thirsts for your blood," said he finally, "but guilty you are. I must know how all this has come about."
Eliza threw herself at her father's feet, and related to him what had happened.
"Guido!" replied the king, and pulled the bell, "this presumptuous stranger shall answer to me on the spot."
The servant, who had come, was ordered to bring the painter immediately into the royal presence. The lady appeared to hear nothing of all that was passing. Her eyes raised toward heaven and her lips moving as if in prayer, she stood there as if separated from her surroundings and belonging to another world. The queen spoke conciliatingly to her husband, but his features remained hard and dark.
"Must pictures of a miserable past swing for ever before me?" murmured he. "Must death resign the booty long due him in order to torment me? And what could have induced you, Frau von Albo, now that you are on the verge of the grave, and have lived so long away, to put yourself into such a position?"
"Age makes me a child again," replied the baroness quietly. "I was miserable in the strange land; I must, even at the price of my life, see once again the spot which bore me. It remains my fatherland, in whose bosom my bones would gladly rest near those of my son."
"O sanctissima!" sang the two angel voices through the forest, and the tones came through the open window, and the king thought again of his fatherland, and sighed deeply.