Alkmene let the pen fall, and looked up at the king intently. When she saw that he continued writing, she uttered a low, plaintive whine. With one bound she was again on the back of the king’s chair. Supporting her feet on his shoulder, she snatched the pen from his hand a second time, and jumped down with it. This time she did not let the pen fall, but held it in her mouth, and remained near the king’s chair, looking up to him with her sparkling eyes.
Frederick looked down from his work at the little animal, and a smile flitted over his features.
“Really,” said he, in a low voice, “I believe Alkmene wishes to remind me that it is time to go to bed. Well, come here, mademoiselle, I will grant your desire!”
As if understanding her master’s words, Alkmene barked joyously, and jumped into the king’s lap. The king pressed the little greyhound to his breast, and caressed it tenderly. “My friends have not all deserted me,” he murmured. “I shall probably have a smiling heir, but, when my body is carried to the grave, my dog at least will remain there to weep over me.”
He pressed the greyhound closer to his breast; deep silence reigned in the room. The wind howled dismally through the trees in the garden; a sudden blast dashed some fallen twigs against the low window, in front of which Frederick worked, and it sounded as if ghostly hands were knocking there. The wind whispered and murmured as if the voices of the night and the spirits of the flowers and the trees wished to bring the king a greeting.
Suddenly Alkmene uttered a long, distressful howl, and ran to the door, and scratched and whined until the servants took heart and entered the room.
The king lay groaning in his arm-chair, his eyes glazed, and blood flowing from his pale lips. His physician and a surgeon were summoned at once, and the king was bled and his forehead rubbed with strengthening salts. He awoke once more to life and its torments; and for a few weeks the heroic mind conquered death and bodily decrepitude. But the ride on Condé on the fourth of July was nevertheless his last. After that day Frederick never left his “dark house.”
When the king of the desert, when the lion feels that his end is approaching, he goes to the forest, seeks the densest jungle and profoundest solitude, and lies down to die. Nature has ordained that no one shall desecrate by his presence the last death-agony of the king of the desert.