the hatred of his house for those
who were now free and were yet once its slaves! How he would have them
shot down, have them shot down when he came into power!...

He looked at Xaveria: she herself was shot down, the haughty amazon;
backwards she fell, wounded by the arrow of a Turkish soldier. And he,
that morning, if Von Fest had not....

He threw himself back wildly, buried his face in his hands and sobbed.
No, no, oh no! He would not shoot them down, not kill them, not hate
them! He was not like that: he might be like that for a moment, but he
was not like that! He was fond of his people; he was so grateful when
they rejoiced, when he was able to help them. Surely he would never have
them shot on! He was only growing excited now. What was there in his
soul for all of them, for those millions, of whom he had perhaps seen
only a few thousands and knew only a few hundreds, but one great love,
which threw out arms to them in every direction, to embrace them? Had he
not felt this in that black night on the Therezia Square? Were hatred
and violence his? No, oh no! He was soft, perhaps too soft, too
irresolute, but he would grow older, he would grow stronger; he would
wish to and he would make all of them happy. Oh, if they only cared for
him, if they only loved him with their great mass of surging, black,
frothing humanity, a sable Milky Way of swarming souls, each soul a
spark, like his own; oh, if they only loved him! But they must not hate
him, not look at him with those bloodshot eyes of hatred, not aim at his
throat with those coarse, hairy fingers, not try to murder him, O God,
not try to slay him like a bullock, with a common knife, him, their
future sovereign!...

And he felt that they did not belong to him and did not know him and did
not understand him and did not love him, all of them, and that they
hated him merely out of instinct, because he was born upon the throne!

And his despair because of all this spanned out, immense, a desert of
black night, which he felt eternities wide around him; and he sobbed,
sobbed, like an inconsolable child, because this was as it was and would
become more desperate with each day that brought him nearer to his
future as emperor and to their future: the mournful day which would rise
upon the destruction of the old world....

Then there came a knock at a little door; and the door was softly
opened....

"Who's there?" he asked, startled, feeling the breach of etiquette, no