In the emperor's room the emperor, the empress and Count Myxila sat waiting for the result of the examination and the subsequent consultation. It lasted long. They did not speak while they waited: the empress sat staring before her with her quiet expression of acquiescence; the emperor walked irritably to and fro. The old chancellor, with his stern, proud face and bald head, stood pensively near the window. Then the doctors were announced. They appeared, Professor Barzia leading the way, the others following. The empress fancied that she read the worst on the professor's pale, rigid features; one of the physicians, however, nodded his big, kind head compassionately from behind his colleague, to reassure her. "Well?" asked the emperor. "We have carefully examined his imperial highness, sir," the professor began. "The prince is quite free from organic disease, though his constitution is generally delicate." "What's wrong with him then?" asked Oscar. "The prince's nervous system seems to us, sir, to have undergone an alarming strain." "His nerves? But he's never nervous, he's always calm," exclaimed the emperor, stubbornly. "All the more reason, sir, to appreciate the prince's self-restraint. His highness has evidently kept himself going for a long time; and the effort has been too much for him at last. He is calm now, as your majesty says. But his calmness does not alter the fact that his nerves are completely run down. His highness has clearly been overtaxing his strength." "And in what way?" asked the emperor, haughtily. "That, sir, would no doubt be better known to those at court than to me, who come fresh from my study and my hospitals. Your majesty will be able to answer that question yourself. I can only give you a few indications. His highness told me that he remembered sometimes feeling those fits of giddiness and exhaustion even before the great floods in the north. That was in March. It is now September. I imagine that his highness has been leading a very active life in the meantime?" The emperor made movements with his eyebrows as if he could not understand: tremulous motions of his powerful head, with its fleece of silvering hair. "The journey to the north may in fact have affected his highness, professor," the empress began. She was sitting haughtily upright, in her plain dark dress. Her face was expressionless, her eyes were cold. She spoke in a matter-of-fact tone, as though she were not a mother. "His highness is very sensitive to impressions," she continued, "and he received a good many at Altara that were likely to shock him." The professor made a slight movement of the head: "I remember, ma'am, seeing his highness at the identification of the corpses in the fields," he said. "His highness _was_ very much affected...." "But to what does all this tend?" asked the emperor, still recalcitrant. "It tends to this, sir, that his highness has presumably allowed himself no rest since that time...."