Later the same morning there sounded the ineffable swish of silken petticoats along the corridor and the clinking of high heels on the tiles. La SeÑorita Marquesa d’Aumerle had obtained permission to visit His Most Serene Highness. The sentinel of the evening before was again on duty, and his evil crossed eye seemed to lighten with vast humor as he presented arms for the lady to pass. She met his insolence with a searching, level gaze.

Maximilian hastened to the door of his bare cell, and took both her hands in his. “I am beginning to recognize my friends,” he said simply. “I know, I know,” he added, “you come to tell me that you failed to get the pardon. But you do bring reprieve.”

He would have her believe that he valued that.

Jacqueline regarded steadily the tall, slight figure in black, with the pinioned sheep of the Golden Fleece about his neck, and she sighed. She was disappointed in him. She had thought that pride of race, if nothing more, would give him character during these last moments. She allowed, too, for the grief, and the remorse, in the blow of Charlotte’s death. But she was not prepared for the roving eyes, the disordered mind, the feverish unrest of the condemned prince. Had his 466soul, then, been a cringing one throughout the night just past? It was the first time she had seen him, except at a distance, since the day she arrived in QuerÉtaro, for she had chosen, and perhaps maliciously, to disconcert the tongue of slander. Hence she could not picture the ravages of sickness and anxiety, until now when she beheld his haggard face. It was one to bring a pang. The cheeks were hollow, the lines sharply drawn, and the skin was white, so very white, with never a fleck of pink remaining. And staring from the wasted flesh were the eyes, large and round and faded blue, and in them an appealing, a haunted look. But they softened at sight of her, as though comforted already.

“A reprieve is best,” he said. “You cannot think that I want a pardon, now that, that she is dead!”

“But sire––”

“‘Sire’? Ah, my lady, you are a little late, by something like a few hundred years. You see our American was right after all; a letter no longer makes a king.”

It was a bon mot that Maximilian had always enjoyed, it being his own, but this time he was most zealously in earnest.

“Monsieur, then,” she said, in no mood for reforms of etiquette. “Only, let me talk! We have three days, three days which are to be used. Your Highness must escape!”

But now she understood him less than before, for he only smiled wearily. It was, then, something else than fear that had broken him so.

Escape? And that guard in the corridor? Passing, ever passing, the diabolical humorist seemed to chuckle inwardly, as though to stand death-watch were the most exquisite of jokes.

“That man?” whispered Jacqueline. “Why, that’s Don Tiburcio. He was driven out of the Imperialist ranks by Father Fischer. But from his lips, this very night, Your Highness will hear that the road is open to Vera Cruz. Ah 467sire–monsieur–we have been working, we others. There will be horses ready, there will be a long ride, and then, you will safely board an Austrian ship waiting for you.”

Maximilian slowly shook his head. “No,” he said, “I am ready to die, as–as ready as I shall ever be.”

“But the remaining years of your natural life, Your Highness counts them as nothing! Yet you might live twice your present age!”

“My life–over again,” he murmured dreamily.

“Of course, why not?”

“One year to redeem each year that has gone.”

“Years of Destiny!” she cried, thinking to touch him there.

“No!” he exclaimed, so harshly and quick that it startled her. “But for me they will be years of dearest mercy. Wait, tell me first, Miramon and MejÍa––”

“Yes, yes, we will save them too. Only, the risk is greater.”

“Bien!” He had almost accepted, but he smothered the word, and starting up, began to pace the room. At last he stopped. “The risk must be lessened, for them,” he said. “I will remain.”

“H’m’n,” the girl ejaculated, “Hamlet declines? Then there will be no play at all, at all.”

Maximilian knew how stubborn she could be; and so, reluctantly, he joined the plot.

“I have deserved Marquez and Fischer and Lopez,” he sighed. “But why there should be friends, even now, that I cannot understand.”

Yet she told him bluntly why she wanted his safety. It was on France’s account. Still, his gratitude was no less profound. She who would give life to others, what was her life to be henceforth? The mellowing sorrow, which her vivacity could not hide, smote him again, as it had that evening in Mexico when he came to her for counsel. He remembered. Out of a useless ambition for her country she had squandered 468her name, blighted her future. He remembered how, looking on her saddened face, he had been exalted to a pure devotion, and had burned with knightly fervor to do her some impossible service. But what was the service? There his memory failed, and he despised the chivalrous ardor which could be quenched with feeding on itself. After the fearful vigil of the night before, he had found a suit of armor beside him. In a word, he had forgotten self. Simple compassion was enough. That service? that service? If he could only remember. But he must. And in hot anger he strode back and forth, while Jacqueline sat and gazed in wonder. Once, turning from the corridor window, he paused. The guard had stopped a man, who now was evidently waiting until the prisoner should be unoccupied. Unseen himself, Maximilian recognized in the man the American named Driscoll. And then he remembered. He remembered Jacqueline’s secret, betrayed to him that evening in Mexico. He remembered that her happiness was lost in the loss of this man’s respect. Here, at last, lay the impossible service!

Maximilian glanced toward her stealthily. No, from where she sat she could not see the corridor, could not see the waiting American. A moment later Maximilian stood behind her; and when he spoke, she thought it odd that he should change from French to halting English.

“Miss d’Aumerle,” he began, in distinct if nervous phrasing, “yes, it was for France, all, all of which you haf done. Therefore is it that you haf come to this country, and here to QuerÉtaro, whatever is to the contrary said.”

“De grace,” she laughed, rising abruptly, “there’s enough to do to-day without discussing––”

But he intercepted her even as she opened the door.

“Will Your Highness kindly let me pass?”

“And I know, I alone, that nefer haf you toward myself once felt, once shown, that which––”

469A sharp, indignant cry escaped her. Following her gaze he saw the American pass on down the corridor and out of hearing.

“Now who,” exclaimed the chagrined prince, “would ever have imagined such delicacy of breeding!”

“And don’t ever again,” cried Jacqueline furiously, “imagine that I stand in need of being righted!” Wherewith she too was gone, leaving her clumsy knight staring blankly after her.

A few moments later Driscoll knocked.

It was the first meeting of these two men since the memorable afternoon at Cuernavaca, when Driscoll had surprised Jacqueline listening to royalty’s shameless suit. Now he beheld Fatality’s retribution for that day’s bitterness. Retribution, yes. But it was not restitution. The girl he loved had just passed him in the corridor with a slight casual nod, and he would not, could not, stretch forth a hand to stop her. Instead, the smile so ironical of Fate had touched his lips.

“I was sent by SeÑor Juarez, sir,” he addressed the archduke in the tone of military business. “The President is afraid your three days of reprieve will be misunderstood. He sent for me as I was leaving San Luis yesterday, and I–I was to tell you––”

“You need not hesitate, colonel.”

“Well, that you must not hope for pardon, for the sentence will positively be carried out day after to-morrow. That–I believe that is all.”

“But–” Maximilian called, staying him. “Dios mio, such news merits a longer telling. It seems to me too, SeÑor Americano, that you should enjoy it the more, since it was partly you who brought me to this.”

“I don’t know as I’d thought of that. How?”

“You ask how? Do you forget how you took the traitor Lopez to Escobedo, the night I was betrayed?”

470Driscoll swung bluntly round on his questioner. “No I don’t,” he replied. “But you see, there was such a lot of bloodshed scheduled for the next day?”

“Isn’t that rather a curious reproof from a soldier? Loyal hearts would have bled, yes, and gladly. Noble fellows, they would have saved their Emperor!”

Driscoll half snorted, and turned on his heel. But he stopped, his lips pressed to a clean, hard line. “What of those townsmen in the trenches?” he demanded. “It wasn’t their fight.”

Maximilian’s eyes opened very wide, and slowly his expression changed. The thick lower lip drooped and quivered. Suddenly he came nearer the American, a trembling hand outstretched.

“I was saved that,” he murmured earnestly.

“They were,” the grim trooper corrected him.

“The townsmen, yes. But I–I was kept from murder. God in heaven, I would have murdered them! Ah, seÑor, if I could put to my account a night’s work such as yours, that night, when you used the traitor! I could almost thank Lopez. I do thank you.”

Still Driscoll failed to notice the proffered hand. He might have, had he seen his suppliant’s face, and the tense anguish there.

“Those innocent non-combatants, then,” Maximilian went on, “so they counted more than a prince with you?”

“Of course, there were a thousand of ’em.”

The other’s haggard look gave way to a smile, half sad, half amused, and taking the American by the shoulder in a grip almost affectionate, he said, “Colonel, did you ever happen to know of one Don Quixote of La Mancha? Well, lately I’ve begun to think that he was the truest of gentlemen, though now I believe I could name another who––”

“And,” interrupted Driscoll, “did you ever try to locate the 471most dignified animal that walks, bipeds not excepted? Well, sir, it’s the donkey. Take him impartially, and you’ll say so too.”

The strain was over. Maximilian laughed. “If Don Quixote had only had your sanity!” he began; “or rather,” he added, charmed with the conceit, “if knighthood had had it, then the poor don would never have been needed to be born at all.”

Ignoring the sincerity of the Hapsburg’s new philosophy, and how tragically it was grounded, Driscoll only smiled in a very peculiar way. Knighthood? The word was supercilious cant, and irritated him. During that very moment, while listening to Chivalry’s devotee, the young trooper thought of a little ivory cross in his pocket, a cross which was stained with a girl’s blood. MurguÍa had given it to him, to give to Maximilian on the eve of execution. But Driscoll had not promised, and yet MurguÍa had implored him to take it, even without promising. The old man held faith in vengeance as a spring to drive all souls alike, and if Maximilian’s last earthly moment could be embittered with sight of a cross, then, he firmly believed, the American needed only to be tempted with the means to do it. Moreover, in a sudden impulse, Driscoll had taken the holy symbol, “to do with as he chose.” There was no message, MurguÍa had explained. The SeÑor Emperador would read the graven name, “Maria de la Luz,” and that would suffice.

Looking now on the cultured gentleman caressing his beard, Driscoll thought again how hellishly distorted was the sign of salvation then in his pocket. But he left it there. He, too, had a king’s pride, incapable of low spite. Charity alone, though, would have held him, if he had but known that Maximilian was ignorant of the dead girl’s fate.

The archduke for his part had been amiable and conciliatory, because there was a certain delicate question he wished to ask.

“Oh by the way, mi coronel,” he said abruptly, “I must 472extend my excuses for keeping you waiting in the corridor just now. But there was another visitor here. And as we happened to be talking of–well, of a rather personal matter, not intended for outside ears––”

“Do not worry. When you raised your voice, I turned and left.”

“But perhaps,” said Maximilian slowly, “it would have been better if you had overheard, either you or another knowing the cruel rumors which–which link my recent visitor’s name with my own. Then the truth would have been made known. That truth, seÑor,” he hastened to add, despite a hardening frown between the American’s eyes, “means first that I have been honored, indeed, in my visitor’s––”

He got no further. A broad hand closed over his mouth.

“Another word of that, and I’ll–I’ll––”

The threat was left unfinished. Gasping in the chair where he had fallen, Maximilian found himself alone. He was vaguely nonplussed. There had been so many revelations of late that he thought this one simply a further re-adjusting of himself to the modern world of men. The present instance had to do with the critical juncture where the woman enters. But he had learned something else, too. The American loved her, and that was important. Yet lovers were very contrary beings, he mused lugubriously.

“Still, I shall try again,” he decided. “One humble success against my career of distinguished failures should not be too much to expect.”

The night that followed, a black, favorable night, was the time planned for escape. Horses ready saddled waited outside the town under the aqueduct. Certain guards were bribed, among them Don Tiburcio. The humorous rascal had driven a hard bargain, but only because the money was to be had. He would have sold himself as briskly for the cream of the jest.

473Late the same night there came a frantic pounding at Driscoll’s door, where he was quartered in the sacristy of the old Capuchin church. “Well?” he muttered, alert already.

“Hurry, mi coronel!” a cracked voice blended with the knocking. “Hurry, you are wanted!”

“Murgie!” Driscoll exclaimed, flinging wide the door. “Back from San Luis, and prowling round here as usual, eh? Well, what’s the matter?”

“Quick, seÑor! Maximilian is sick. Go, go to him!”

Partly dressed, bootless, unarmed, Driscoll shoved the old man aside, and sped through the church, hopping over half awakened soldiers as he went. Once in the street, he glanced up at the tower room, which was Maximilian’s, and thought it odd that no light streamed through the narrow slits there. The sentinels, too, were gone. But he ran up the steps and darted along the corridor, only to strike his head against a heavy wooden door that was ajar. He rushed inside the cell, and with arms outspread quickly covered the space of it, in the utter dark smashing a chair, crashing over a table, cursing a mishap to his toe. But he found no one.

“This here’s a jail-break,” he mumbled under his breath. “Dam’ that Murgie, he’s roped me in to stop ’em!” Whereat, all unconsciously, he smiled again at Fatality.

Groping his way back to the corridor, he felt rather than saw three dim figures steal past the door. Silently, swiftly, he gave pursuit. He heard a fervent whisper just ahead.

“Hasten, dear friends, and may God––”

The next second he was grappling with someone. But his unknown captive did not resist.

“There, seÑor, loosen your fingers. I am not escaping. I am returning to my cell. But I had to make the other two think that I was with them.”

The voice was Maximilian’s.

474“Hark! Ah, poor souls, they have failed!”

The prince spoke truly. A fierce “Alto ahÍ!” sounded below. Then there were musket shots and the confusion of many scrambling feet. MurguÍa had routed out the church barracks. And when torches were brought, the soldiers discovered that they had hands on Miramon and MejÍa. But the false sentinels were gone! In leaving the road clear they had used it themselves, already.

“You fools!” suddenly a half crazed wail arose. “Fools, he has escaped! He––”

“Oh dry up, Murgie,” said Driscoll, coming down the steps. “He’s gone back to his room, I reckon.”