The next morning at ten o’clock the Emperor and his guests entered the great brown and gold and crimson throne room with its imposing frieze of Hapsburg rulers, its illustrated genealogy of the blended houses of Hapsburg and Lorraine, crowned so naïvely with Maximilian and Carlotta, its eleven graceful chandeliers, and its meagre and apologetic throne. This the Emperor, in the full-dress uniform of an Austrian general, ascended with no apparent sense of its incongruity, thankful, no doubt, that it stood ready for the occasion. Before it was a table spread with a formidable-looking document. On either side of the throne stood the archdukes and the ministers, also in full uniform. The Primate, in his robes of ceremony, faced the Emperor, and Fessenden stood close to the table, his father beside him. The rain had passed, the gay southern sunshine flooded the fine room, where, for the first time in its history, an emperor stood on its mockery of a throne. It had been built for balls and other functions of young and wealthy royalty, and in those days the crimson tapestries had not been woven. A moment after the Emperor had taken his position on the throne, Ranata, accompanied by Alexandra, and for the last time by an Obersthofmeisterin, entered and walked proudly up the room. She wore, not the sombre frock her father had had in mind when he issued the imperial fiat that she should marry in travelling-dress, but an elaborate and beautiful costume of white cloth. The Emperor scowled, but felt himself helpless, for she also wore a hat, albeit with plumes that were truly imperial, and framing and enhancing a beauty which might have been conventionalized and half obscured by orange-blossoms and lace. She wore the pearls which her skin always seemed to reflect, her eyes sparkled, there was a faint pink in her cheeks, a deeper hue in her lips, and she had never borne herself with a more subtle blending of triumphant beauty and the dower of eight centuries of kings. She looked so happy that even her relatives smiled in involuntary sympathy, although they had never disapproved of a Hapsburg more. As for Fessenden, who had been beating a light tattoo on the table, staring at the document, he stood suddenly erect, his eyes flashing their pride and delight; and when they stood together before the throne they seemed to fill the room with their victorious youth, and to obliterate every memory of failure and tragedy.