Joseph rose slowly from his knees. The tears in his eyes were dried; his lips were compressed, and once more he wore the old look of cold and sullen indifference. He made a profound inclination before his mother. "I have heard the empress's commands," said he, in a hoarse and unnatural voice; "it is my duty to obey. Allow me to go to my prison, that I may doff this manly garb, which is no longer suitable to my blasted career."
Without awaiting the answer, he turned away, and with hasty strides left the room.
The empress watched him in speechless anxiety. As the door closed upon him, her features assumed an expression of tenderness and she said: "Go quickly, Franz—go after him. Try to comfort and sustain him. I do not know why, but I feel uneasy—"
At that moment a cry was heard in the anteroom, and the fall of a heavy body to the floor.
"God help me—it is Joseph!" shrieked the empress; and, forgetting all ceremony, she darted from the room, and rushed by her dismayed attendants through the anteroom, out into the corridor. Stretched on the floor, insensible and lifeless, lay her son.
Without a word the empress waved off the crowd that was assembled around his body. The might of her love gave her supernatural strength, and folding her arms around her child, she covered his pale face with kisses, and from the very midst of the frightened attendants she bore him herself to her room, where she laid him softly upon her own bed.
No one except the emperor had ventured to follow. He stood near, and reached the salts, to which the empress had silently pointed. She rubbed her son's temples, held the salts to his nostrils, and at last, when he gave signs of life, she turned to the emperor and burst into tears.
"Oh, Franz," said she, "I almost wish that he were sick, that day and night I might watch by his bedside, and his poor heart might feel the full extent of a mother's love for her first-born child."
Perhaps God granted her prayer, that these two noble hearts might no longer be estranged, but that each might at last meet the other in the fullest confidence of mutual love.
A violent attack of fever followed the swoon of the archduke. The empress never left his side. He slept in her own room, and she watched over him with gentlest and most affectionate care.