–The Nut-Brown Maid.
Later the same morning there sounded the ineffable swish of silken petticoats along the corridor and the clinking of high heels on the tiles. La Señorita Marquesa d’Aumerle had obtained permission to visit His Most Serene Highness. The sentinel of the evening before was again on duty, and his evil crossed eye seemed to lighten with vast humor as he presented arms for the lady to pass. She met his insolence with a searching, level gaze.
Maximilian hastened to the door of his bare cell, and took both her hands in his. “I am beginning to recognize my friends,” he said simply. “I know, I know,” he added, “you come to tell me that you failed to get the pardon. But you do bring reprieve.”
He would have her believe that he valued that.
Jacqueline regarded steadily the tall, slight figure in black, with the pinioned sheep of the Golden Fleece about his neck, and she sighed. She was disappointed in him. She had thought that pride of race, if nothing more, would give him character during these last moments. She allowed, too, for the grief, and the remorse, in the blow of Charlotte’s death. But she was not prepared for the roving eyes, the disordered mind, the feverish unrest of the condemned prince. Had his 466soul, then, been a cringing one throughout the night just past? It was the first time she had seen him, except at a distance, since the day she arrived in Querétaro, for she had chosen, and perhaps maliciously, to disconcert the tongue of slander. Hence she could not picture the ravages of sickness and anxiety, until now when she beheld his haggard face. It was one to bring a pang. The cheeks were hollow, the lines sharply drawn, and the skin was white, so very white, with never a fleck of pink remaining. And staring from the wasted flesh were the eyes, large and round and faded blue, and in them an appealing, a haunted look. But they softened at sight of her, as though comforted already.
“A reprieve is best,” he said. “You cannot think that I want a pardon, now that, that she is dead!”
“But sire––”
“‘Sire’? Ah, my lady, you are a little late, by something like a few hundred years. You see our American was right after all; a letter no longer makes a king.”
It was a bon mot that Maximilian had always enjoyed, it being his own, but this time he was most zealously in earnest.
“Monsieur, then,” she said, in no mood for reforms of etiquette. “Only, let me talk! We have three days, three days which are to be used. Your Highness must escape!”