The cardinal had reached the locked door of the library: his unwounded hand had turned the key; his fingers were already upon the door-handle when Zabern, with a laugh of horrid glee, clutched him by the collar of his cassock with the same hand that held the sabre, and pulled him backward upon his knees. The agony of the situation forced from Ravenna a yell that curdled the blood of the treacherous steward who kept watch at the foot of the staircase, but it had no effect upon Zabern. "You paid no heed to Natalie's screams, nor will I to yours." He thought no more now of safeguarding himself by imparting to the murder the appearance of suicide. "To hell, and say that Zabern sent you." Foaming with fury, he dealt not one, but many strokes at the kneeling, swaying figure, with its feebly upraised hands. Nikita and Gabor, equally frenzied, joined in the savage work. * * * * * The three miserable men wiped their bloody sabres upon the window-curtains, and stared down upon the carpet at something which had once been a man. The clock-tower of the cathedral now sent forth the sweet and pretty carillon that always heralded the striking of the hour. Then after a solemn interval came the first peal of midnight. "The princess's coronation day!" said Nikita. "Humph! will there be any coronation?" muttered Zabern. "Hark to the shouting!" said Gabor. From every quarter of the capital, from the groups moving to and fro along the route of the intended procession, from spacious square and narrow alley, from the brilliantly illuminated hotel, and from the obscure private dwelling, came the sound of cheering, gradually swelling into one prolonged universal roar. The gala-day had come at last! Zabern with a grim smile looked towards the north. The heaven in that direction was tinged with a red glow from the thousands of watch-fires in the Czar's camp--that camp towards which the swift-flying dove was now winging its course with the tidings fatal to Czernova. How long would it be ere that huge array came pouring across the border to depose the princess, and to establish the duke upon-- Zabern started. Ere the shouting of the joyous populace had died away, a new and startling sound was reverberating through the night air. It was the boom of a single cannon, and that at no great distance. Its significance was intuitively divined by Zabern. "The Citadel-gun!" he cried, recoiling from the window. "By God, the duke has escaped!" CHAPTER XVII THE BEGINNING OF THE CORONATION The morning of Barbara's coronation broke soft and sunny; it seemed almost impossible that anything disastrous could happen on a day so fair. Prior to setting off for the cathedral the princess entertained her ministers at breakfast. She herself occupied the head of the table, with Radzivil at her right hand and Zabern at the left. Dorislas was absent in command of the ten thousand appointed to guard the frontier.