will be yours. You are
my emperor; you are already my emperor, more than Oscar! Farewell, my
prince, my crown-prince, my emperor! When I see you again, you will be
nothing more to me than my emperor and my emperor alone!

* * * * *

"To HIS IMPERIAL HIGHNESS THE DUKE OF XARA,

"LIPARA.

"CASTEL VAZA,
"--_November_, 18--.

"MY BELOVED PRINCE,

"Pardon me if I venture to send you the accompanying pages. I meant at
first to send you a long letter, a letter of farewell. And I did write
you many, but did not send them to you and destroyed them. Then I wrote
to you only for myself, took leave of you for myself. But can I trace
what goes on within me, what I think from one moment to the other? I did
miss it so: my sweet farewell, which would still bind me in some
intimate way to you! And so I could not refrain--at last, after much
vacillation of mind--from sending you these pages, which I had written
only for myself. At your feet I implore you graciously to accept them,
graciously to read them. Then destroy them. Through them you will learn
the last thoughts that I have dared to consecrate to the mystery that
was our love....

"I press my lips to your adored hands.

"ALEXA."

CHAPTER VI

1

The Empress Elizabeth rode with Helene of Thesbia in a victoria,
preceded by an outrider, from St. Ladislas to the Old Palace, which,
together with the cathedral and the Episcopal, formed one gigantic
building. Here, at Altara, the Archduke Albrecht and the Archduchess
Eudoxie, with the imperial bride, had taken up their abode on the
previous day. From the tall fortress--a broad mass of granite with
crenulated plateaus and squat towers, overlooking Altara--the road
wandered downwards, indistinguishable beneath the old chestnut-trees, in
tortuous zig-zags. The dust flew up under the wheels; on both sides lay
villas, with terraces gay with vases and flowers and statues, sloping
lower and lower towards the town. The villas blazed with bunting; the
blue-and-white flags with the white crosses revelled in all their gaudy
newness among the dusty foliage of the old trees and acacias.

It was June, six months after the death of the little prince; but the
mourning had been lightened because of the approaching nuptials of the
Duke of Xara, which the emperor