several months; it affected the empress keenly, disagreeably.

The conversation again turned upon the inundations in the north. The
empress showed her children the latest telegram, the same that she had
shown to Herman; it mentioned fresh disasters: still more villages swept
away, towns harassed by the swollen and overflowing rivers, after a
month of rain that had resembled the Flood. It had caused the emperor to
proceed three days ago to the northern provinces; but they at court were
now every moment expecting his orders that the crown-prince should
replace him there, as he himself was returning to Lipara because of the
cabinet crisis.

The crown-prince discussed all this a little coldly and formally. He was
a young man of twenty-one, slender and of short stature, very slightly
built, with delicate, melancholy features and dull, black eyes, that
generally stared straight before him; a young moustache tinted his upper
lip as with a stripe of Indian ink. He had a way of drooping his head a
little on his chest and then looking up from under his eyelids; he
generally sat very quiet; his hands, which were small and broad but
delicate, rested evenly upon his knees; and he had a trick of carrying
his left hand to his eyes and then--he was a little short-sighted--just
peering at his ring. He was tightly girt in the blue-and-white uniform
of a captain in the lancers, the uniform which he generally wore in
public: its silver frogs lent a certain breadth to his slenderness; on
his right wrist he wore a narrow, dull-gold bracelet.

"This is the first letter," said the empress. "Read it out, Thera...."

The princess took the letter. The emperor wrote:

"It is heartrending to see all this and to be able to do so little. The
whole district south of the Zanthos, from Altara to Lycilia, is one
expanse of water; where villages stood there now float the remains of
bridges and houses, trees, accumulations of roofs, dead cattle, carts
and household furniture and, as we were going along the Therezia Dyke,
which--God be praised!--still stands firm at Altara, a cluster of
corpses was slowly washed straight before our feet in one gigantic
embrace of death...."

The crown-prince had suddenly turned pale; he remained sitting in his
usual attitude, peering at his ring, with the trick that was his habit.
Thera read on. When the crown-prince looked up he met his mother's eyes.
She nodded to him with her eyelids, unseen by the others, who were