What do you bring me that's nice? Smaller than a horse, but heavier?
Heavier? Oh, how heavy it is, how heavy, heavy, heavy!..."

His little voice came as though with an effort, as though he were
lifting something; his convulsive, small, broad hands made a gesture of
laborious lifting.

"Berengar," said the crown-prince; and his voice broke, his heart sank
within him....

"Othomar," replied the child.

A cry of anguish escaped the emperor.

"Yes, you're always so good to me," continued the little prince in his
sing-song. "You always give me such nice things. You know, those lovely
guns on my last birthday? And that pistol? But mamma's afraid of
that!... Are you dying, Othomar? Look, there's blood on your ear.... But
when people bleed they die! Are you dying, Othomar? Look, blood on your
coat...."

The empress remained sitting straight upright; she glared from Berengar
at the bleeding wound of her eldest son....

"Blood, blood, blood!" sang Berengar. "Othomar is dying! Yes, he always
gives me so many nice things, does Othomar. I have so many already, many
more than all the other children of Liparia put together! And what am I
to have now?... Still more?... That nice thing: what is it? I can feel
it: it's so heavy; but I can't see it...."

The doctor had come from the anteroom and approached with the poultices.

"I can't see it!... I can't see it!..." the boy sang out, painfully and
faintly.

When the doctor applied the poultices, Berengar struggled, began to cry,
as though a great sorrow was springing up in his little heart:

"I can't see it!" he sobbed. "I shall never see it!..."

A violent paroxysm succeeded the sobbing: he struck out wildly with his
arms, pulled off the poultices, threw the ice off his head, stood up
mad-eyed in his bed, flung away the sheets.... Othomar rose, the empress
also. The emperor sat in a chair, his face covered with his hands, and
sobbed by Princess Thera's side. The doctors approached the bed,
endeavoured to calm Berengar, but he struck them: the fever mounted into
his little brain in madness.

At this moment Professor Barzia entered: he was not staying in the
palace; he had been sent for at his hotel.

"What is your highness doing here?" he said, point-blank, to Othomar.

The crown-prince made no reply.

"Your highness will retire to your own rooms at once," the professor
commanded.

"Save my boy!" exclaimed the emperor, broken, sobbing.

"I am saving the crown-princ