While King Otto stood on the balcony, down below in the crowd an American woman looked up, and suddenly caught her husband by the arm.
“Robert,” she said, “Robert, it is Bobby’s little friend!”
“Nonsense!” he retorted. “It’s rather dramatic, isn’t it? Nothing like this at home! See, they’ve crowned him already.”
But Bobby’s mother looked with the clear eyes of most women, and all mothers.
“They have not crowned him,” she said, smiling, with tears in her eyes. “The absurd little King! They have forgotten to take off his paper crown!”
The dead King lay in state in the royal chapel. Tall candles burned at his head and feet, set in long black standards. His uniform lay at his feet, his cap, his sword. The flag of his country was draped across him. He looked very rested.
In a small private chapel near by lay old Adelbert. They could not do him too much honor. He, too, looked rested, and he, too, was covered by the flag, and no one would have guessed that a part of him had died long before, and lay buried on a battlefield. It was, unfortunately, his old uniform that he wore. They had added his regimental flag to the national one, and on it they had set his shabby cap. He, too, might have been a king. There were candles at his head and feet, also; but, also, he had now no sword.
Thus it happened that old Adelbert the traitor lay in state in the Palace, and that monks, in long brown robes, knelt and prayed by him. Perhaps he needed their prayers. But perhaps, in the great accounting, things are balanced up, the good against the bad. In that ease, who knows?
The Palace mourned and the Palace rejoiced. Haeckel had told what he knew and the leaders of the Terrorists were in prison. Some, in high places, would be hanged with a silken cord, as was their due. And others would be aesthetically disposed of. The way was not yet clear ahead, but the crisis was passed and safely.
Early in the evening, soon after he had appeared on the balcony, the Court had sworn fealty to Otto the Ninth. He had stood on the dais in the throne room, very much washed and brushed by that time, and the ceremony had taken place. Such a shout from relieved throats as went up, such a clatter as swords were drawn from scabbards and held upright in the air.