The party on horseback stopped in front of the inn. Bernstein ran out of the door down the garden path, and helped the Prince to regain his balance as he tumbled off his horse. The whole party, shouting and singing, and headed by the Prince, whom Bernstein held up, came through the garden, along the path to the little wood where Michelle sat. None of the Prince’s companions, men or women, were quite sober. The Countess Bertha was able to dance a little as she came along the path, but finding it hard to keep her equipoise, presently stopped. When at last the Prince had got within a few feet of Michelle, he stopped and looked at her with an idiotic smile. His hat was on the back of his head, and he gesticulated with his naked sword.
“Not so devilish handsome after all,” he said. “Pale—distrait—longing perhaps for that villain of an Egremont.”
His eye fell upon Hugo Stein. Some connection between Roger Egremont and Hugo Stein, some confusion in their identities, some recollection of the words that Hugo Stein had spoken on that night Michelle had left Orlamunde,—came lumbering through his drunken brain. A sudden frenzy shone in his bloodshot eyes. “You here!” he cried to Hugo Stein. They had been drinking together all night and half the day; and Hugo Stein, following his life-long practice, had remained sober while he helped to make the others drunk. “You here! you scoundrel! You are my wife’s lover,—you said so!”
His maudlin voice rose to a shout. “You said so, and denied it the other day when you came back; but you were telling the truth at first! And my honor—my honor requires— Stand, I say!”
He made a lunge with his sword at Hugo Stein, who was smiling in his face. It was a blow that only a drunkard or a madman could have delivered. He was no swordsman at any time; and Hugo Stein was reckoned among the best swordsmen in Europe,—with the small sword, the back sword, the sabre, and the rapier. But that blow delivered at Hugo Stein, standing with his hand on his own sword, went home to his heart. He uttered no cry as the blade entered his breast, breaking off short, while the handle fell to the ground.
Bernstein shrieked and caught the Prince by both arms, dragging him backward as he shouted: “My honor—my honor, I tell you, Bernstein—”
Hugo Stein pulled the broken blade from his breast; he knew where it had touched. He drew his own sword, and, with his heart’s blood gushing out in a torrent, aimed one straight blow at the drunken creature, staggering and screaming in Bernstein’s arms. Hugo Stein had never given a better blow than this,—the last one he was ever to deliver. It brought the Prince to his knees. Something in Prince Karl’s face told Hugo Stein that his sword arm had not lost its cunning even in death, and that Prince Karl would shortly meet him at that rendezvous to which both were hastening. He uttered no word,—all his strength had been saved for that one blow,—but fell upon his back on the ground. No hand was outstretched to receive him as he fell; no hand staunched his life blood as it poured from his breast. He died as he had lived,—a villain, and friendless. And close by lay the Most High, Most Mighty, and Most Puissant Prince of Orlamunde,—neither high, nor mighty, nor puissant now; but only the wretched remnant of a wicked and abominable man, breathing out his last breath in crime and drunkenness. All of the people who had come with him fled, the women shrieking loudly. Bernstein alone held up the Prince’s dying head. And kneeling on the ground was Michelle,—some overmastering impulse of womanly pity making her wipe the death-sweat from the Prince’s brow, and helping to lay him a little easier, and to whisper to him,—
“I forgive you, and may God forgive you.”
But she cast not so much as a look, much less a prayer, on Hugo Stein.