"Go to sleep, dear one," he said, "we have much work before us that must be done before morning." She stood where she was until she had seen him enter her brother's room.
Madame Fellner spent the night in prayer. This simple woman, whose only eloquence was to say "I love you," found words to implore God for her husband. She prayed so long and ardently, that at length sleep came to her where she knelt; for great was her need of it.
When she opened her eyes the first light of the dawn was filtering through the window blinds. Everything seems strange, fantastic, at such an hour. It is neither night nor day and nothing looks as it does at any other time. She gazed around. She felt weak and chilly and afraid. She glanced at the bed—her husband was not there. She rose, but everything danced before her eyes. "Is it possible," she thought, "that sleep overtook him also while he worked? I must go to him." And, groping her way through the passages, which were darker than her own room, she reached his. She knocked on the door. There was no answer. She knocked louder, but all was silent. A third time she knocked and called her husband's name.
Then, trembling with anguish, under a premonition of the sight that awaited her, she pushed open the door. Between her and the window, black against the sun's first rays, hung her husband's body suspended above an overturned chair.
CHAPTER XXXII
QUEEN AUGUSTA
All through the night that was so sorrowful for the Fellner family the Baroness von Bülow was travelling rapidly to Berlin, where she arrived about eight o'clock in the morning.
In any other circumstances she would have written to the queen, asked for an audience, and fulfilled all the requirements of etiquette. But there was no time to lose; General von Roeder had allowed only four-and-twenty hours for the payment of the indemnity. It was due at ten o'clock, and in case of refusal the city was threatened with immediate pillage and bombardment. Notices at the corners of all the streets proclaimed that at ten o'clock on the morrow the general with his staff would be waiting in the old Senate Hall to receive the levy. There was, indeed, not a moment to lose.
On leaving the train, therefore, Madame von Bülow took a cab and drove straight to the Little Palace, where the queen had been living since the beginning of the war. There Madame von Bülow asked for the chamberlain, Waals, who, as has been said already, was a friend of her husband's; he came instantly, and seeing her dressed all in black, cried out: