The young prince thought of this, as he pressed the cold hand to his lips in a last farewell. "I swear to you, my great uncle and king, that I will faithfully strive to fulfil your prophecy, and accomplish something good and useful, and to do honor to the name I bear. Let the kiss which I now press on your hand be the seal of my vow, and my last greeting!" He arose, and his large dark eyes rested on the body with a lingering, tender look. "Oh," sighed he, "why am I not a painter or an artist, that I might sketch this scene!" "A happy suggestion," said the prince royal, eagerly. "I am certainly no artist, but I can draw a little nevertheless; and I intend to make for myself a memento of this day.--Mr. Eckstein, I beg you to wait a quarter of an hour, in order that I may make a sketch of this scene." The sculptor, who had already approached the body with his apparatus, bowed respectfully, and stepped back. Prince Louis took a pencil and a sheet of paper from the king's writing-desk, and handed it to his brother the prince royal. The latter commenced to sketch the scene with hurried strokes.[23] His brother stood at his side, looking on; behind the chair were the two lackeys, and the greyhound's head protruded from beneath the chair. The sculptor Eckstein had withdrawn to the farthest end of the room. Prince Louis had, however, noiselessly glided into the adjoining concert-room, where the instruments were kept. There were the flutes and violins in their cases, and there stood the magnificent piano, inlaid with ivory and mother-of-pearl, which the king's hands had so often touched. The silence of the death-chamber was once more unbroken. The body lay there, so great and sublime in the two-fold majesty of death and renown, and the prince royal was absorbed in his work, when the silence was suddenly broken by subdued tones of plaintive music. These tones came from the concert-room, and filled the chamber of the dead with low and harmonious sighs and lamentations. Alkmene crept out from under the arm-chair, and trotted slowly into the adjoining chamber, as if to see if her master, whose voice she had not heard since yesterday, had not called to her to come to him at the piano. The greyhound, however, returned to her former position, when she saw that it was another who sat at the piano.