ral Mejia.

"Could we cut our way out?" he asked.

Mejia put down his glasses. He paused, then shook his head.

Straightway an orderly with a white flag was sent down the hill. But the
firing did not cease for that. Maximilian, seeing that he could make no
terms for those around him, seeing them fall by scores instead, himself
followed the orderly; and following him, was the ever faithful shadow.

From out the dark fringe a man on a white horse, a black bearded man
with monstrous flapping ears, General Escobedo, rode forth to meet the
Hapsburg. Then Maximilian forgot the eyes of the world, and thought of
her who had suffered with him, who had suffered more than he, to hazard
this, their dream.

"It is our throne, Charlotte," he murmured, and gave up his sword.

CHAPTER XVIII

EL CHAPARRITO

"Meagre were his looks,
Sharp misery had worn him to the bones."
--_Romeo and Juliet._

A few days later Jacqueline and Berthe attended a performance at the
Teatro de Iturbide. It was the first held there since the beginning of
the siege, and to the place late foes were thronging eagerly in what
seemed a most inordinate thirst for amusement. The playhouse was without
a roof. Its metal covering had been widely sown in the shape of bullets,
and only a canvas overhead kept out the sun. But the broiling pit was
filled, as well as circling tier over tier of loges, and in the street a
great crowd jostled and surged, like people who stare at the dead walls
of a jail because a man is being hanged inside. If the curious cannot
have both Time and Space to their liking, then the more ghoulish will
gorge themselves on the coincidence of Time alone. "Now," they whisper
awesomely, "his hands and feet are being strapped! What _must_ he
be thinking this very instant, and we standing here?" So those outside
the Teatro de Iturbide sweated patiently. In all evidence it was not an
ordinary performance scheduled for that day.

"Buzzards?" said Jacqueline, looking up and seeing their outspread wings
shadowed on the canvas roof, "Fi donc, _that_ effect is long since
shabby!" But it chilled her, nevertheless.

The curtain was up. A drop, showing fields in green and a receding road
in brown, filled the back. The actors seemed actors solely, and this
idea persisted with the Frenchwoman, as with many another, throughout.
Seven military characters arranged themselves in a kind of state on the
unpainted, slan