Someone knocked. "No, father, not yet," Maximilian answered gently, although his mood was impatience. The confessor sighed in protest against the waste of precious time, but he did not move away, as he had already twice before during the night. Instead he came and stood at the corridor window. His lip trembled pityingly. There was news, he said. Maximilian pushed back the book, and was on his feet. The priest meeting his eager look, shook his head sadly. "It comes from--from Miramar." Maximilian fell back. One hand groped out involuntarily, as in appeal before a blow. "News of Charlotte?" he asked faintly. Charlotte was dead, the priest told him. During a long time, after the priest had gone, his head lay on his arms, between the two candles. He heard no more the sentry challenges, nor sensed the menace in every slightest sound of the dark night outside. There was something else. "Death?" At first he did not consciously strive for an answer. But the question kept falling, and falling again, as a lash. The vulgar hands which plied the scourge, the stupid yellow faces, these no longer mattered. He felt the blows themselves, only the blows. She had died, the poor maniac! She had died, a thing for the lowliest pity. And this was true of the haughty child of Orleans because she had wanted a throne. Slowly her husband raised his head; and staring at the wall, his tear-dimmed eyes opened wider and wider. Because she had wanted a throne? Because she had wanted a dais above the meek and lowly, above those who now pitied her! His eyes fell on the Universal History--the family record, and there grew in his eyes a look of detestation. Groaning suddenly, he buried his head again in his arms.