"MY BELOVED PRINCE,
"Pardon me if I venture to send you the accompanying pages. I meant at first to send you a long letter, a letter of farewell. And I did write you many, but did not send them to you and destroyed them. Then I wrote to you only for myself, took leave of you for myself. But can I trace what goes on within me, what I think from one moment to the other? I did miss it so: my sweet farewell, which would still bind me in some intimate way to you! And so I could not refrain—at last, after much vacillation of mind—from sending you these pages, which I had written only for myself. At your feet I implore you graciously to accept them, graciously to read them. Then destroy them. Through them you will learn the last thoughts that I have dared to consecrate to the mystery that was our love....
"I press my lips to your adored hands.
"ALEXA."
CHAPTER VI
1
The Empress Elizabeth rode with Hélène of Thesbia in a victoria, preceded by an outrider, from St. Ladislas to the Old Palace, which, together with the cathedral and the Episcopal, formed one gigantic building. Here, at Altara, the Archduke Albrecht and the Archduchess Eudoxie, with the imperial bride, had taken up their abode on the previous day. From the tall fortress—a broad mass of granite with crenulated plateaus and squat towers, overlooking Altara—the road wandered downwards, indistinguishable beneath the old chestnut-trees, in tortuous zig-zags. The dust flew up under the wheels; on both sides lay villas, with terraces gay with vases and flowers and statues, sloping lower and lower towards the town. The villas blazed with bunting; the blue-and-white flags with the white crosses revelled in all their gaudy newness among the dusty foliage of the old trees and acacias.
It was June, six months after the death of the little prince; but the mourning had been lightened because of the approaching nuptials of the Duke of Xara, which the emperor wished to see celebrated as early as possible. The empress, however, still wore heavy mourning, which she would not lay aside before the day of the wedding; Hélène was in grey; the liveries were grey.
Many pedestrians, horsemen, carriages passed along the road and stopped respectfully; the empress bowed to left and right; she received cheers and salutations from the balconies of the villas. In this warm summer weather a mellow welcome, a soft gaiety reigned all along the road; the road, with its villas where the people sat in groups, emitted a friendliness which affected the empress pleasantly and made her heart swell in her breast with a gentle melancholy. Children ran about and played in white summer suits; they stopped suddenly and, like well-bred children, accustomed to seeing members of the imperial family pass daily, they bowed low, the boys awkwardly, the girls with new-learnt curtseys. Then they went on playing again.... And the empress smiled at a large family, old and young people together, who sat on a terrace, doubtless celebrating a birthday, and laughed and drank, with many glasses and decanters before them, the children with their mouths full of cake. So soon as they saw the outrider, they all stood up and waved, some with their glasses still in their hands, and the empress, laying aside her usual stiffness, bowed back with a winning smile.