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By Root 603 0

its terraces and balconies illuminated by the flames. From the roof a white flag was waving. Struck by a bad premonition, I marched into the courtyard at the head of my warriors. The majordomo appeared on the terrace. Bowing, he descended the monumental staircase and approached hesitantly, with uncertain gestures. I pointed my blade at him. My loyal troops stood immobile, lifting high their smoking flares: in the silence one could hear the hissing of the flames. "Where is M. de V.?" I asked. He spread his hands helplessly. "He has gone away, sir," he answered. "We shall see if this is so. And where is the Infanta?" "Her Highness has also left, they have all gone away ..." I had no reason to doubt his words. Someone must have betrayed me. There was no time to be lost.

"Company mount horse!" I cried. "We must cut off their flight!" We broke into the stables. In the warm darkness we found the horses. Within a moment we were all mounted on the rearing and neighing steeds. Galloping, we formed a long cavalcade and reached the road.

"Through the woods toward the river," I commanded and turned into a forest path. The forest engulfed us. We rode amid waterfalls of noise, amid disturbed trees, the flares lighting the progress of our extended file. Confused thoughts rushed through my head. Had Bianca been kidnapped, or had her father's lowly ancestry overruled the voice of her mother's blood and the sense of mission I had been trying in vain to implant in her? The path became narrower and changed into a ravine, at the end of which there opened a large forest clearing. There at last we caught up with them. They saw us coming and stopped their carriage. M. de V. got out and crossed his arms on his breast. He was walking toward us, his glasses shining crimson in the light of the flares. Twelve bared blades were pointed at his breast. We approached in a large semicircle, in silence, the horses at a trot. I shielded my eyes in order to see better. The light of the flares now fell on the carriage, and inside it I saw Bianca, mortally pale, and, sitting next to her, Rudolph. He was holding her hand and pressing it against his breast. I slowly dismounted and advanced shakily toward the carriage. Rudolph rose as if wanting to get out and speak to me.

Stopping by the carriage, I turned to the cavalcade following me slowly, their sabers at the ready, and said:

"Gentlemen, I have troubled you unnecessarily. These people are free and can proceed if they wish, unmolested. No hair of their heads is to be touched. \bu have done your duty, gentlemen. Please sheath your sabers. I don't know how completely you have understood the ideal that I engaged you to serve, and how profoundly it has fired your imagination. That ideal, as you can see, has now completely failed. I believe that, as far as you are concerned, you might survive its failure without much damage, for you have already survived once before the failure of your own ideals. \bu are indestructible now; as for me . . . but never mind that. I should not like you to think," and here I turned to those in the carriage, "that what has happened has found me entirely unprepared. This is not so. I have been anticipating it all for a long time. If I had persisted in my error for so long, not wishing to admit the truth to myself, it was only because it would not have been seemly for me to know things that exceed my competence, or openly to anticipate events. I wanted to remain in the role destiny had allotted to me, I wanted to fulfil my task and remain loyal to the position I had usurped. For, I must now confess with regret, despite the promptings of my ambition, I have only been a usurper. In my blindness, I undertook to comment on the text, to be the interpreter of God's will; I misunderstood the scanty traces and indications I believed I found in the pages of the stamp album. Unfortunately, I wove them into a fabric of my own making. I have imposed on my own direction upon this spring, I devised my own program to explain its immense flourishing and wanted to harness it, to direct it according