At the door he turned once more to say farewell. Still she spoke not a word, but looked as though, like Niobe, she were stiffening into marble.
The emperor opened the door, and passed into the anteroom.
As he disappeared, she uttered a low cry, and clasped both her hands over her heart.
"My God! my God! I love him," sobbed she, and reeling backward, she fell fainting to the floor.
CHAPTER LXXII
FAMINE IN BOHEMIA.
The cry of distress from Bohemia reached Vienna, and came to the knowledge of the emperor. Joseph hastened to bring succor and comfort to his unhappy subjects.
The need great. Two successive years of short harvest had spread want and tribulation throughout all Germany, especially in Bohemia and Moravia, where a terrible inundation, added to the failure of the crops, had destroyed the fruits and vegetables of every field and every little garden.
The country was one vast desert. From every cottage went forth the wail of hunger. The stalls were empty of cattle, the barns of corn. The ploughs lay empty on the ground, for there was neither grain to sow nor oxen to drive. There were neither men nor women to till the soil, for there was no money to pay nor food to sustain them. Each man was alone in his want, and each sufferer in the egotism of a misery that stifled all humanity, complained that no one fed him, when all were fainting for lack of food.
"Bread! bread!" The dreadful cry arose from hundreds of emaciated beings, old and young, who, in the crowded cities, lay dying in the streets, their wasted hands raised in vain supplication to the passers-by.