“I might perhaps if you were my wife. Yet we were near being wedded once. There was a time when I wanted to make you my bride.”
“But it went no further than wishing,” returned the Princess, laughing.
“We soon learned to know each other,” continued Banfi. “There would have been no room in one house for two such heads as ours, which find one realm too small to hold them both. We both of us love to rule. We should have been hard put to it if one had been obliged to obey the other. Things fell out for the best. We have found our corresponding halves—you Apafi; I Margaret—and we are both contented.”
With these words Banfi tenderly kissed his wife’s hand and departed, leaving the sisters alone.
Anna, with noble gravity, placed her hand on the shoulder of her sister, who looked up to her with a soft smile like an innocent child regarding its guardian angel.
“You have been weeping,” began the Princess; “ ’tis in vain that you try to put a good face on it.”
“I have not been weeping!” returned Margaret, keeping her countenance with wonderful self-control.
“Well, well; I’m glad you conceal it. That shows you love him; and if ever there was a time when your husband needed your love, your watchfulness, and your protection, it is now.”
“Your words alarm me! You have something extraordinary to tell me!”
“My coming here at all must have been enough to have alarmed you. You may well suppose that I would not come to your castle for nothing. We have both equal cause to fear a certain person, and if we do not quickly come to an understanding, one of us may lose what she prizes most in the world.”
“Speak! oh, speak!” cried Dame Banfi, trembling, and making her sister sit down beside her on the sofa.
“Our husbands have hated each other from the first. They were always of different opinions, belonged to opposite parties, and early became accustomed to regard each other as foes. Woe betide us if this hatred should turn to open strife, and we should see our loved ones compass each other’s ruin.”
“Oh, I can positively assure you that Banfi nourishes no hostile feeling against your husband.”
“I do not apprehend Apafi’s fall, but your husband’s. The throne upon which he was placed by force has quite changed Apafi’s character. I perceive, to my consternation, that he has begun to grow jealous of his authority. Why, even at Érsekújvár, when he first became Prince, he expressed his anxiety to the Grand Vizier that Gabriel Haller was plotting for the diadem, whereupon the Grand Vizier had poor Haller beheaded there and then without my husband’s knowledge; but Apafi still recollects the message your husband sent him on that occasion, namely, that ere long he would tear from his shoulders the green velvet mantle, the symbol of the princely dignity.”
“Oh, my God! what must I not fear?”
“Nothing, so long as I do not lose my husband’s favour. While you are securely sleeping, I am watchfully guarding against his passionate outbursts, and hitherto God has given me strength to fight against the monsters who would make of his reign a bloody memorial. But there is a certain condition of mind to which my husband is liable when my influence over him loses all its talismanic power; when, revolting against his own nature, his gentleness turns to ravening savagery; when his eyes, usually so ready to weep at the death of his lowliest vassal, seem to thirst for blood; when he throws off his habitual circumspectness and becomes wildly reckless. And this condition—I blush to confess it—is drunkenness. I do not bring it against him as an accusation. He whom we love has no fault in our eyes.”
“Except one thing—his infidelity to us,” interrupted Margaret.
“That too, yes, that too must be forgiven when it becomes a question of saving his life,” replied the Princess.
“Oh, Anna!” cried Margaret, “you make me suspect mysteries which you will not reveal to me.”
“What you ought to know you shall know. A little while ago your husband, with haughty presumption, opposed himself to a mighty faction which has kings for its confederates and kings for its antagonists; he might just as well have opposed Destiny herself. He is too proud to calculate the dangers which he thus draws down upon his head; or does he really think that they who sharpen their swords against a reigning monarch would suffer for an instant one of their own subjects to raise his head against them? And Banfi has threatened, mocked, insulted them, and entangled the meshes of their well and widely laid plans—nay, more, he has encountered and browbeaten them in the very presence of the Prince.”
Dame Banfi folded her arms in timid resignation.
“I see the storm which is gathering over Banfi’s head. In his drunken fits, Apafi has let fall hints which have filled my soul with terror, and I don’t wish Apafi’s to be the hand to strike down Banfi for the sake of others. They will try to catch him at every turn, but we two will watch over him. I will endeavour to keep back the stroke, yet should it fall, ’tis for you to ward it off. We must both possess the entire love and confidence of our consorts, so as to be able to intervene energetically and decisively should they come to blows. For would it not be frightful if one fell by the other’s hand, and one of us were the cause of the other’s misery?”
Margaret timidly pressed Anna’s hand.
“What am I to do? Oh, my God! what can I do? How can I intervene? I have no power.”
“Your power lies in your love, watchfulness, and self-sacrifice,” returned Dame Apafi with an exalted look, striving to inspire her weaker sister with something of her own strength.
At that moment the fate of two men was in the hands of two angels, and the fate of those two men was one with the fate of
