The aide-de-camp, in the full uniform of the Chancellor's own regiment of Cuirassiers, was white as his own coat. He gulped out:
"Excellency, I am charged by His Highness, Prince Augustus of Württemberg, Commander-in-Chief of the Prussian Guard Corps..."
The Chancellor's prominent blue eyes lightened so fiercely upon the speaker that he began to stammer and boggle in his speech:
"Terrible intelligence ... only just received by His Highness.... Yesterday Your Excellency's sons, Count Herbert and Count William, were in the general cavalry charge which took place at Mars la Tour..."
The great soldierly figure standing with the huge spurred boots apart, the hands leaning on the long steel-hilted sword, might have been cast in iron or carved in granite for all the emotion conveyed by look or gesture. The voice said stridently and harshly:
"The First Dragoons of the Guard were not involved in the struggle. Only the brigades of Von Barby, the 4th Westphalian Cuirassiers, the 10th Hussars, and the 16th Dragoons."
The ghastly aide faltered, perspiring freely:
"At the moment of General von Barby's charge, it has been unfortunately ascertained, a squadron of Prussian Guard Dragoons of the First Regiment—returning from a patrol, dashed into the mêlée..."
The Chancellor drew a sharp breath, but stirred not a finger. His fierce eyes, staring from dark pits that had suddenly been dug round them, paralyzed the wretched bearer of the tragic intelligence. He asked in a tone that appalled by its tranquillity:
"Have both my sons been killed?"