"Mandt, do you answer for my cure?"
The doctor hung his head, and could not reply.
"Farewell, then, my friend."
"Sire, if not, then, as your physician, permit me as a devoted servant to see you again. Who can tell? God is great! and for the destiny of the Russia which he protects, may work a miracle."
"And because I know that God protects Russia, so neither do I wish nor hope for my restoration to health. Mandt, let my family come now. I assure you the time will soon fail me."
Mandt wept. With tears in his eyes, he went out and related to the courtiers his conversation with the emperor. Strange contradiction! This man, whom I have tried to depict as so severe and haughty, was adored by all who approached him. Courtiers, soldiers, servants, burst into tears. Lost in the crowd with them, I mingled my complaints and prayers.
Then, after the empress and the grand hereditary duke, the imperial family, all in tears, entered the apartment of the emperor. The door closed upon them, and all that passed there, all that was said in this supreme grief, only God knew. Mandt, however, with a voice choked with emotion, continued his recital, and we listened to him with the keenest attention. How and by what indiscretion the news he had just given us was spread in the city, I cannot tell; but already, before the death of the czar, it was believed at St. Petersburg that Mandt had helped to poison him. From this to the pretended act itself there was but one step toward belief, and this was soon overcome; so the exasperation, true or false, against the honest doctor, knew no bounds, and they would have torn him to pieces in the streets. The name of Nicholas still inspired such terror that every one endeavored to give some public demonstration of grief as a claim on his benevolence in the event of his returning to life. Yet after his death these manifestations changed their character, and the contrast between such marks of affection and the epithets with which they loaded his memory when they were certain he really ceased to exist, was a lesson for kings to contemplate. For the time, though, the anger of the people against the poor doctor was so blindly furious, that it is related of a thief, seized by the collar by a passerby, from whom he had tried to steal his watch, that in order to escape, he raised the cry, "Hist! hist! it's Mandt, comrades, it's Mandt!"
The interview between the emperor and his family lasted three hours, three long hours, during which expectation for us was changed into real anguish. By degrees retired, one by one, the children, the grand-children, and his brothers. The grand hereditary duke came out last, bathed in tears. An hour flew by, and not a sound was heard from the imperial chamber; no one dared enter. Mandt listened attentively, holding his breath. Suddenly a loud noise was heard in the corridors; a courier from Sebastopol arrived. As the whole court knew the impatience with which the emperor awaited the news from the Crimea, the aide-de-camp general on duty, thinking to please the emperor, knocked at his door.
"Do they still want me?" murmured the emperor; "tell them to let me rest."
"Sire, a courier from Sebastopol."