"Very well, it shall be yours. I have command of the guard of La Force. I want you there."
IN SOLITARY CONFINEMENT.
On that same November day—the day on which we heard the conversation between the colonel and the sergeant and the provincial—a prisoner sat in one of the strongest and most gloomy of the cells of La Force. Most of the cells were occupied by several persons, some of them containing as many as could comfortably lie down therein; but this man had been condemned to death, and placed in solitary confinement. He was a young man, not over thirty, fair-faced and handsome. He was of German birth—a German of Darmstadt—and though clad in the garb of a French labourer, he was yet a gentleman of education and refinement; his name, as had been learned from marked articles in his possession, Otho Maximilian.
Poor Maximilian! In his soldier's ardour and love of country he had volunteered to his Prince to enter the enemy's lines and bring away a correct draught of the outer and inner fortifications, together with proper plans of the disposition of troops. And all this he had come very near to doing; but, alas! not quite. Had he been content to carry away his observations and computations in his head, and made the visible signs of his espionage in the presence of his Prince, all might have been well. He had gained the interior of the city and its free range; he had made plans of all important things he wished to communicate, and he was apprehended and searched, with those neatly drawn plans upon his person.
Poor Otho! So young and so fair, with wife and three children praying for him, and waiting in the Fatherland, thus to die! He shed no tears; he gave voice to no complaints; he was sure his comrades would keep his memory green; that his Prince would bless him for what he had tried to do, and that his dearly loved ones would seek consolation in the thought that he had given his life to his country.
On the day after to-morrow he was to die. He was not to be shot, like a soldier, nor beheaded, as kings and noblemen had been; he was to suffer the ignominy of hanging. The thought gave him keenest torture.
That dismal day drew to a close, and, at eventide, when the attendant came with his food, he made one last earnest appeal for writing materials, that he might write a brief letter to his wife. But such a grant would be a violation of prison law; it could not be done. Then he closed his lips, resolved not to speak again save to the Heavenly Father.
The night passed, and another dark and dismal day. Another evening came, and another night shut down over the great prison. Otho's last night of earth, as the few grim marks on his dungeon wall told him.
At eleven o'clock he threw himself upon his hard straw pallet and tried to sleep. He heard the solemn bells strike the midnight hour, and a few moments later the warder of that corridor opened the little wicket in his door and looked in upon him.