Thus the Most Serene Archduke’s first perception of calamity was not that royal blood was to flow, but that it was to flow obscurely. Even the ancient raven curse, the curse of the Habicht which had given his House its very name, was now fulfilled by unclean buzzards. He saw them each day, perched on the neighboring roofs.
He sighed and turned to his book. Universal History? Yes, but for hundreds and hundreds of years that history of millions and millions of people was no more than the record of his own little family group. Such a course of reading for such a man held a terrible grandeur, and it must have been a unique sensation of pride that touched the golden-bearded, ultra-refined viking prince. A spoilt child he was, and though so cruelly reproved by Life, he yet could learn no lesson in the passing footnote that he would add to that family record. He could not see that the light which made the printed characters 461 so dazzling, yet distorted them. He could not know that the commonest man of the millions and millions might read that Universal History by quite a different and a calmer light. But he was aware of the sentinel’s tread back of him, and aware too of the fellow’s coarse, familiar leer.
One consolation he felt he might have had, and this was the dignity of martyrdom. But no one, alas, seemed to regard him as a martyr at all. He had begged that he alone should suffer. But the play at knightly generosity was too shallow. For at the time Maximilian believed that he would not suffer in any case. Later, though, when he knew that he must die, then with simple earnestness he had pleaded for Miramon and Mejía, and forgot himself altogether. But Juarez had hardly more than acknowledged the telegram, and now in the cell next him Miramon was confessing, and in the cell on his other side Mejía waited. Each of these two men would leave a wife and child.
Someone knocked. “No, father, not yet,” Maximilian answered gently, although his mood was impatience. The confessor sighed in protest against the waste of precious time, but he did not move away, as he had already twice before during the night. Instead he came and stood at the corridor window. His lip trembled pityingly. There was news, he said.
Maximilian pushed back the book, and was on his feet. The priest meeting his eager look, shook his head sadly.
“It comes from–from Miramar.”
Maximilian fell back. One hand groped out involuntarily, as in appeal before a blow. “News of Charlotte?” he asked faintly.
Charlotte was dead, the priest told him.
During a long time, after the priest had gone, his head lay on his arms, between the two candles. He heard no more the sentry challenges, nor sensed the menace in every slightest 462sound of the dark night outside. There was something else. “Death?” At first he did not consciously strive for an answer. But the question kept falling, and falling again, as a lash. The vulgar hands which plied the scourge, the stupid yellow faces, these no longer mattered. He felt the blows themselves, only the blows.
She had died, the poor maniac! She had died, a thing for the lowliest pity. And this was true of the haughty child of Orleans because she had wanted a throne. Slowly her husband raised his head; and staring at the wall, his tear-dimmed eyes opened wider and wider. Because she had wanted a throne? Because she had wanted a dais above the meek and lowly, above those who now pitied her! His eyes fell on the Universal History–the family record, and there grew in his eyes a look of detestation. Groaning suddenly, he buried his head again in his arms.