Four thousand serried bayonets squared the base of the hill, and made a compact, bristling hedge to hold back the common people. Through it marched the doomed Imperialists, each with his confessor and a platoon of guards, and so toiled on up the slope. The archduke looked about him. There were many privileged spectators within the cordon, but nowhere did he see a former friend. All, all, had kept away, and in his heart he knew that it was better so. He could not ask that much of them. But stay--yes, a remembered figure caught his attention; a shriveled decrepit figure. Here, too, mid every color Republican, he beheld in the man's garb a last surviving uniform of the vanished Empire. It was, however, scarcely to be distinguished as such. The red coat was threadbare, and soiled with dust. The ragged green pantaloons, held by a knotted rope, were grotesquely faded. Yet the prince, who had once gloried in dashing regimentals and mistook them for power, was deeply touched. He recognized a lone unit of what had been none other than the Batallon del Emperador. He paused, to have a word with the miserable derelict. "So, you would be near me, even now?" he said. "Ah, ever faithful little old man, but are you brave enough for the horror of it? Are you?" Red eyeballs rolled upward in their sockets, and for a space met the archduke's kindly gaze. Then the steady repellant hate in them seemed disconcerted, and the withered form cowered under the touch of the pale white hand. Inaudible words rattled in the old man's throat, and he trembled, as though to turn and run. Maximilian regarded him benevolently, thinking it a crisis of emotion. "There, there," he said, "go if you wish. It's not well, you see, to think of me so much. But you must not imagine that I am ungrateful. When you believed yourself unseen, certainly when you had no hope of reward, throughout my misfortunes, you have always hovered near me, on the battlefield, and more lately under my prison window. Yes, yes, I have seen. And now, and now I thank you." The bloodshot eyes roved the ground, but did not lift again. "As humble, as loyal as a dog," Maximilian murmured as he turned away.