"No matter! We won the day at Soumiossi; we cast confusion into the camp of Hieyas; we triumphed at Kioto. And the Son of the Gods, starting for a moment from his torpor, is about to order the two parties to be reconciled." "Hieyas will refuse." "He cannot refuse; he cannot revolt openly against the Mikado." "He who attacked him with such sacrilegious daring!" "He attacked him to gain possession of his person, and dictate his own terms to him. The Mikado a captive would be a mere nobody; the Mikado free, and grasping the reins of power once more, is omnipotent." "Hieyas will impose conditions which I cannot accept. It is his interest to continue the war." "Nevertheless, he will be obliged to obey for the moment; and our most pressing need is a few months of respite." "To be sure; we could then assemble all our forces. Communication is cut off; the armies of the various princes have not arrived." "Are Signenari and his twenty thousand men still on the Island of Awadsi?" asked the Prince. "Still," said the Shogun; "and the young General is desperate at being reduced to inaction." "I was just going to ask you to issue orders for him to open the campaign." "What do you mean?" "I have a personal injury to avenge. I entreat you to lend me that army." "On whom do you wish to be revenged, friend?" said the Shogun. "On one of those who betrayed you,--on the Prince of Tosa. He has attacked my kingdom, plundered my fortress, carried off my bride; and deceived by a resemblance into thinking he had captured me, he refused the man the death of a nobleman, and cut off the head of one of my servants." "Such things can indeed only be washed out in blood," said Fide-Yori. "I will give you an order for Signenari, and I put a war-junk at your disposal. Do not spare that infamous Tosa,--that envious, cowardly traitor, unworthy of the rank he holds." "I will raze his towers, burn his harvests, and kill him as one would butcher a hog," said the Prince; "only regretting that he has but one life to pay for all his crimes." "May you succeed!" said the Shogun. "Alas!" he added, "I was so glad to see you; and you come only to go again! What solitude! what an empty void about me! What sorrow! My heart is gnawed by a secret grief which I must not reveal. Some day I will confide it to you; that will solace me." The Prince raised his eyes to the Shogun's face; he remembered that several times before, a confession had risen to the King's lips, and had been arrested there by a sort of timid modesty. Now, as then, Fide-Yori was embarrassed, and turned away his head. "What can it be?" thought Nagato. Then he added aloud: "My vengeance once appeased, I promise to leave you no more." As he left the Shogun's apartments, the Prince of Nagato met Yodogimi. "Ah! you are here, illustrious victor!" she said, bitterly; "you come to receive the praises due your noble deeds."