were not.  We only dreamed it.  We never lived under the shadow of a throne.  Who was Marie?  A sovereign of cats, and crown princess in the realm of little dogs and birds—­a nursery tale to tell naughty little children who will not go to sleep!  But Sophie Botta will be here to-morrow, and the next day, and always; she will be with you, the silly, stupid little maid, who can do nothing but obey those whom she loves with all her heart.”

Vavel with difficulty refrained from giving voice to his overwhelming grief.

“Just see,” Marie continued in a gay tone, “how much better I am!  Heretofore, when the hour came for the evening star to appear, the fever would come too, and to-day it has failed to come with the star.  Joy has cured me.  Don’t take your hands away from me, Ludwig—­Katharina.  They will—­hold me—­hold me—­fast.”

But they did not “hold her fast.”

And why should such a being remain on this earth—­a being that could do naught else but love and renounce, adoring her nation even when it persecuted her?

* * * * *

A dark thunder-cloud rose above the horizon out over the Hansag.  The sky looked like a vaulted ceiling hung with mourning draperies.  From time to time a distant flash of lightning illumined the cloud-curtain, then would be heard the rumbling of thunder, like the deep tones of a distant organ.

Under the threatening sky lay the glittering lake.  Its surface of quicksilver was streaked here and there with black shadows—­the track of the wind-gusts racing across it.  The trees were rustling in the wind, making a sound like a distant choral.

On the shore of Lake Neusiedl stood the Volons in rank and file.  They were waiting for something that was coming from the farther shore of the little cove.

Presently the glistening surface of the water was ruffled by a black object that pushed out from the shore.  It was a boat.  Six men were rowing, a seventh held the rudder.  There was a coffin in the boat, covered with a simple pall.  No ostentatious trappings ornamented the coffin; only a myrtle wreath lay on it.  A woman, sat at the head of it, another at the foot—­the former a lady, the latter a peasant wife.

The six men, with even and powerful strokes, sent the craft through the ripples which occasionally leaped into the boat, as if they would salute her who had so often toyed with them.

At the moment the boat touched the shore the storm burst.  Vivid lightning illumined the heavy downpour of rain, and it seemed as if the black-robed forms bore the coffin to its grave amid a flood of harpstrings that reached from heaven to earth.

The two weeping women followed the coffin; at a little distance they seemed two shadows.  The helmsmen of the funeral boat now stepped to the head of the grave and opened his lips to speak, but a heavy peal of thunder drowned his voice.  When it had ceased he said: