se. Later, though, when he knew that he must
die, then with simple earnestness he had pleaded for Miramon and Mejia,
and forgot himself altogether. But Juarez had hardly more than
acknowledged the telegram, and now in the cell next him Miramon was
confessing, and in the cell on his other side Mejia waited. Each of
these two men would leave a wife and child.

Someone knocked. "No, father, not yet," Maximilian answered gently,
although his mood was impatience. The confessor sighed in protest
against the waste of precious time, but he did not move away, as he had
already twice before during the night. Instead he came and stood at the
corridor window. His lip trembled pityingly. There was news, he said.

Maximilian pushed back the book, and was on his feet. The priest meeting
his eager look, shook his head sadly.

"It comes from--from Miramar."

Maximilian fell back. One hand groped out involuntarily, as in appeal
before a blow. "News of Charlotte?" he asked faintly.

Charlotte was dead, the priest told him.

During a long time, after the priest had gone, his head lay on his arms,
between the two candles. He heard no more the sentry challenges, nor
sensed the menace in every slightest sound of the dark night outside.
There was something else. "Death?" At first he did not consciously
strive for an answer. But the question kept falling, and falling again,
as a lash. The vulgar hands which plied the scourge, the stupid yellow
faces, these no longer mattered. He felt the blows themselves, only the
blows.

She had died, the poor maniac! She had died, a thing for the lowliest
pity. And this was true of the haughty child of Orleans because she had
wanted a throne. Slowly her husband raised his head; and staring at the
wall, his tear-dimmed eyes opened wider and wider. Because she had
wanted a throne? Because she had wanted a dais above the meek and lowly,
above those who now pitied her! His eyes fell on the Universal
History--the family record, and there grew in his eyes a look of
detestation. Groaning suddenly, he buried his head again in his arms.

At dawn he too was to die, and because he too had craved a sceptre. Yet,
and yet, he had meant to be an instrument of good. Born of kings,
anointed by the Vicar of Christ, he had come as agent from the Almighty.
But God had failed to sustain him, God had--again the blue eyes raised,
but dry now, and stark in terror. "Yes, yes, yes," so his reeling soul
cried to him, "there _i