ked up at him, surprised at his voice. Then she
looked again at her dead child. She released herself from her son's
arms, raised herself still higher, bent over the little white face and
kissed the forehead. But, when the stony coldness of the dead flesh met
her lips, she drew back and stared stupidly at the corpse, as though she
understood for the first time. Her arms grew stiff with cramp; she wrung
her fingers; she fell straight back upon Othomar.

And her eyes became moist with the first tears that she had shed for
Berengar's death and she hid her head in Othomar's arms and sobbed and
sobbed....

Then he led her carefully, slowly, down the steps of the catafalque, led
her out of the hall. In the corridor they came across Barzia; the
prince's calm and quiet face, as he supported his mother, eased the
professor's mind....

So soon as the empress and crown-prince had left the knights' hall, four
knights of St. Ladislas entered in their blue robes. They took up their
positions on either side of the catafalque and stood motionless in the
candle-light, staring before them, watching in the night of mourning
over the little imperial corpse, on which the blue light of the moon now
descended.... The priests too entered and prayed....

The palace was silent. When Othomar had consigned his mother, at the
door of her apartments, to the care of Helene of Thesbia, he went
through the galleries to his own rooms. But, on turning a corridor, he
started. The great state-staircase yawned, faintly lighted, at his feet,
with beneath it the hollow space of the colossal entrance-hall.
Upholsterers were occupied in draping the banisters of the staircase
with crape gauze, for the time when the coffin should be carried
downstairs. With wide arms they measured out the mists of black, threw
black cloud upon cloud; the clouds of crape heaped themselves up with a
dreary flimsiness, up and up and up, seeming to fill the whole staircase
and to rise stair upon stair as though about to conquer the whole palace
with their gloom....

The upholsterers did not see the crown-prince and worked on, silently,
in the faint light. But a cold thrill passed through Othomar. In deathly
pallor he stared at the men there, at his feet, measuring out the crape
and sending clouds of it up to him. He recalled his dream: the streets
of Lipara overflowing with crape till the very sun reeled.... His blood
seemed to freeze in his veins....

Then he made the sign of