"Christian!"
He continued to advance towards the door.
She made a step forward, picking up her dress as if to pursue him; then suddenly said:—
"Well, be it so."
He stopped short and turned round. She was standing before the open window, her foot upon the narrow stone balcony, with one arm clasping her son ready to bear him into death, the other extended menacingly towards the cowardly deserter. The moon lit up from without this dramatic group.
"To an operetta King, a Queen of tragedy," she said, stern and terrible. "If you do not burn this instant what you have just signed, and swear on the cross that it will never be repeated, your race is ended, crushed, wife and child, there on the stones."
Such earnestness seemed to inspire her vibrating tone, her splendid figure bent towards the emptiness of space as though to spring, that the King, terrified, dashed forward to stop her.
"Frédérique!"
At the cry of his father, at the quiver of the arm that held him, the child—who was entirely out of the window—thought that all was finished, that they were about to die. He never uttered a word nor a moan; was he not going with his mother? Only, his tiny hands clutched the queen's neck convulsively, and throwing back his head with his fair hair hanging down, the little victim closed his eyes before the appalling horror of the fall.
Christian could no longer resist. The resignation, the courage of this child, who of his future kingly duties already knew the first—to die well—overcame him. His heart was bursting. He threw upon the table the crumpled parchment which for a moment he had been nervously holding in his hand, and fell sobbing in an arm-chair. Frédérique, still suspicious, read the deed through from the first line to the very signature, then going up to a candle, she burned it till the flame scorched her fingers, shaking the ashes upon the table; she then left the room, carrying off her son, who was already falling asleep in her arms in his heroically tragic attitude.