Day by day Josepha grew worse until she lay dying. Still the empress shed no tear. Bending over her daughter's bed, she received her last sigh. And now she watched the corpse, and would not be moved, though the emperor and Van Swieten implored her to seek rest.
When the body was removed, the poor, tearless mourner followed it from the room through the halls and gates of the palace until it was laid in the grave.
Then she returned home, and, without a word, retired to her own apartments. There, on a table, lay heaps of papers and letters with unbroken seals. But the empress heeded nothing of all this. Maternity reigned supreme in her heart—there was room in it for grief and remorse alone. She strode to the window, and there, as she had done not many days before, she looked out upon the gray towers of the chapel, and thought how she had driven her own precious child into the dismal depths of its loathsome vaults.
The door was softly opened, and the emperor and Van Swieten were seen with anxious looks directed toward the window where the empress was standing.
"What is to be done?" said Joseph. "How is she to be awakened from that fearful torpor?"
"We must bring about some crisis," replied Van Swieten, thoughtfully. "We must awake both the empress and the mother. The one must have work—the other, tears. This frozen sea of grief must thaw, or her majesty will die."
"Doctor," cried Joseph, "save her, I implore you. Do something to humanize this marble grief."
"I will try, your majesty. With your permission I will assemble the imperial family here, and we will ask to be admitted to the presence of the empress. The Archduchess Marie Antoinette and the Archduke Maximilian I shall not summon."
Not long after, the door was once more softly opened, and the Emperor Joseph, followed by his sisters and the doctor, entered the empress's sitting-room.
Maria Theresa was still erect before the window, staring at the dark towers of the chapel.