That will serve,
and it will cut this net of Sapt's from about my limbs."
He spoke firmly and coldly; so that when I looked at him I was
amazed to see how his lips twitched and that his forehead was
moist with sweat. Then I understood what a sudden, swift, and
fearful struggle he had suffered, and how the great temptation
had wrung and tortured him before he, victorious, had set the
thing behind him. I went to him and clasped his hand: this action
of mine seemed to soften him.
"Sapt, Sapt," he said, "you almost made a rogue of me."
Sapt did not respond to his gentler mood. He had been pacing
angrily up and down the room. Now he stopped abruptly before
Rudolf, and pointed with his finger at the queen.
"I make a rogue of you?" he exclaimed. "And what do you make of
our queen, whom we all serve? What does this truth that you'll
tell make of her? Haven't I heard how she greeted you before all
Strelsau as her husband and her love? Will they believe that she
didn't know her husband? Ay, you may show yourself, you may say
they didn't know you. Will they believe she didn't? Was the
king's ring on your finger? Where is it? And how comes Mr.
Rassendyll to be at Fritz von Tarlenheim's for hours with the
queen, when the king is at his hunting lodge? A king has died
already, and two men besides, to save a word against her.
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