The queen sprung forward; but even as she set foot on the sill, she uttered a scream of horror and drew back, with her hands covering her eyes. The presence of the blood-spots was explained, for a dead body had been placed in the room.
It was her almost stepping upon this which had caused her to leap back.
"Bless us," said the king, "it is poor Count Charny's body!" in the same tone as he had said to the gory relic on the pike, "This is poor Mandat's head."
Indeed, the deputies had snatched the body from the cutthroats, and ordered it to be taken into the empty room, without the least idea that the royal family would be consigned to this room in the next ten minutes. It was now carried out and the guests installed. They talked of cleaning up, but the queen shook her head in opposition, and was the first to take a place over the blood-stains. No one noticed that she burst her shoe-laces and dabbled her foot in the red, still warm blood.
"Oh, Charny, Charny!" she murmured; "why does not my life-blood ooze out here to the last drop to mingle with yours unto all eternity?"
Three P. M. struck.
The last of her Life Guards was no more, for in and about her palace nearly a thousand nobles and Swiss had fallen.