“Adelheid was very grateful for what I had done, and as she had now learned to place full reliance upon me, she insisted that I should be the bearer of a letter from her to the Emperor Otto.  I should not travel alone, but be accompanied by a sufficient retinue of soldiers and attendants, and should go as her ambassador.

“The journey was a long and a slow one, but I was rather glad of it, for it gave me an opportunity to ponder over the most ambitious scheme I have ever formed in the whole course of my life.”

“Greater than to be autocrat of all the Russias?” exclaimed Mrs. Crowder.

“Yes,” he replied.  “That opportunity came to me suddenly, and I accepted it; I did not plan it out and work for it.  Besides, it could be only a transitory thing.  But what now occupied me was a grand idea, the good effects of which, if it should be carried out, might endure for centuries.  It was simply this: 

“I had become greatly attached to the young queen widow whose cause I had espoused.  I had spent more than a month with her in the castle at Canossa, and there I learned to know her well and to love her.  She was, indeed, a most admirable woman and charming in every way.  She appeared to place the most implicit trust in me; told me of all her affairs, and asked my opinion about almost everything she proposed to do.  In a word, I was in love with her and wanted to marry her.”

“Thee certainly had lofty notions; but don’t think I object,” said Mrs. Crowder.  “It is Chinese and Tartars I don’t like.”

“It might seem at first sight,” he continued, “that I was aiming above me, but the more I reflected the more firmly I believed that it would be very good for the lady, as well as for me.  In the first place, she had no reason to expect a matrimonial union worthy of her.  Adalbert she had every reason to despise, and there was no one else belonging to the riotous aristocratic factions of Italy who could make her happy or give her a suitable position.  In all her native land there was not a prince to whom she would not have to stoop in order to marry him.

“But to me she need not stoop.  No man on earth possessed a more noble lineage.  I was of the house of Shem, a royal priest after the order of Melchizedek, and King of Salem!  No line of imperial ancestry could claim precedence of that.”

Mrs. Crowder looked with almost reverent awe into the face of her husband.  “And that is the blood,” she said, “which flows in the veins of our child?”

“Yes,” said he; “that is the blood.”

After a slight pause Mr. Crowder continued:  “I will now go on with my tale of ambition.  A grand career would open before me.  I would lay all my plans and hopes before the Emperor Otto, who would naturally be inclined to assist the unfortunate widow; but he would be still more willing to do so when I told him of the future which might await her if my plans should be carried out.  As he was then engaged in working with a noble ambition for the benefit of his own dominions, he would doubtless be willing to do something for the good of lands beyond his boundaries.  It ought not to be difficult to convince him that there could be no wiser, no nobler way of championing the cause of Adelheid than by enabling me to perform the work I had planned.