n to see, as the visions of Truth so
often are when hazily perceived.

He bitterly envied that unhappy Stuart, who, before his palace window,
among Cavaliers and Roundheads, had died in majesty, the bright central
figure in a tragedy of august magnitude. But for the Hapsburg how
sordid, how mean, it all would be! He could see already the gaping,
yellow faces, sympathetic in their stupidity. _They_ would not
really know that a prince was dying. The very guard with shouldered
bayonet outside his door was a deserter, and it was this man, more than
aught else, that gave him to chafe against his ignoble lot. The fellow
never uttered a word, indeed; but he had a heavy, malignant eye, and
each time he passed the large inner window that opened on the corridor
he would look into the cell, as though to locate his prisoner. Then
Maximilian could feel the insolent, mocking gleam upon himself, until
for rage he clenched his fist.

Thus the Most Serene Archduke's first perception of calamity was not
that royal blood was to flow, but that it was to flow obscurely. Even
the ancient raven curse, the curse of the Habicht which had given his
House its very name, was now fulfilled by unclean buzzards. He saw them
each day, perched on the neighboring roofs.

He sighed and turned to his book. Universal History? Yes, but for
hundreds and hundreds of years that history of millions and millions of
people was no more than the record of his own little family group. Such
a course of reading for such a man held a terrible grandeur, and it must
have been a unique sensation of pride that touched the golden-bearded,
ultra-refined viking prince. A spoilt child he was, and though so
cruelly reproved by Life, he yet could learn no lesson in the passing
footnote that _he_ would add to that family record. He could not
see that the light which made the printed characters so dazzling, yet
distorted them. He could not know that the commonest man of the millions
and millions might read that Universal History by quite a different and
a calmer light. But he was aware of the sentinel's tread back of him,
and aware too of the fellow's coarse, familiar leer.

One consolation he felt he might have had, and this was the dignity of
martyrdom. But no one, alas, seemed to regard him as a martyr at all. He
had begged that he alone should suffer. But the play at knightly
generosity was too shallow. For at the time Maximilian believed that he
would not suffer in any ca