CHAPTER XIX
IN ARTICULO MORTIS
"The centuries are conspirators against the sanity and majesty of the soul.... Man cannot be happy and strong until he lives in the present."--_Emerson._
For Maximilian it was the eve of execution. The soul feels that there ismuch to decide at such a time, but under the nettling merciless load thesoul will either flounder pitifully and decide nothing, else lie numband in a half death vaingloriously believe that it has decidedeverything. So may the condemned be open-eyed or blind. Or, according tothe police reporter, be either coward or stoic. But it really depends inlarge measure on whether realization be dulled, or no.
Maximilian had too late come to understand that his anointed flesh wasviolable at all. He learned it only when the death watch was actuallyset on his each remaining breath. And now he was _en capilla_, inthe chapel of the doomed; he, Ferdinand Maximilian Joseph, Archduke ofAustria, Prince of Hungary and Bohemia, Count of Hapsburg, Prince ofLorraine, Emperor of Mexico, even He!
They had given him the tower room of Queretaro's old Capuchin church,and against the wall was an improvised altar. But the sacrament waited.The tapers on the snow-white cloth were as yet unlighted. Instead theMost Serene Archduke--Emperor no longer--read from a battered volume ofUniversal History, which, with a book's queer vagaries, had strayed intohis cell. He read how Charles of England had died, then he paused,blinking at the two candles on the rough table. They were vague shapes,they were horrors, which he now began to see, as the visions of Truth sooften are when hazily perceived.
He bitterly envied that unhappy Stuart, who, before his palace window,among Cavaliers and Roundheads, had died in majesty, the bright centralfigure in a tragedy of august magnitude. But for the Hapsburg howsordid, how mean, it all would be! He could see already the gaping,yellow faces, sympathetic in their stupidity. _They_ would notreally know that a prince was dying. The very guard with shoulderedbayonet outside his door was a deserter, and it was this man, more thanaught else, that gave him to chafe against his ignoble lot. The fellownever uttered a word, indeed; but he had a heavy, malignant eye, andeach time he passed the large inner window that opened on the corridorhe would look into the cell, as though to locate his prisoner. ThenMaximilian could feel the insolent, mocking gleam upon himself, untilfor rage he clenched his fist.
Thus the Most Serene Archduke's first perception of calamity was notthat royal blood was to flow, but that it was to flow obscurely. Eventhe ancient raven curse, the curse of the Habicht which had given hisHouse its very name, was now fulfilled by unclean buzzards. He saw themeach day, perched on the neighboring roofs.
He sighed and turned to his book. Universal History? Yes, but forhundreds and hundreds of years that history of millions and millions ofpeople was no more than the record of his own little family group. Sucha course of reading for such a man held a terrible grandeur, and it musthave been a unique sensation of pride that touched the golden-bearded,ultra-refined viking prince. A spoilt child he was, and though socruelly reproved by Life, he yet could learn no lesson in the passingfootnote that _he_ would add to that family record. He could notsee that the light which made the printed characters so dazzling, yetdistorted them. He could not know that the commonest man of the millionsand millions might read that Universal History by quite a different anda calmer light. But he was aware of the sentinel's tread back of him,and aware too of the fellow's coarse, familiar leer.
One consolation he felt he might have had, and this was the dignity ofmartyrdom. But no one, alas, seemed to regard him as a martyr at all. Hehad begged that he alone should suffer. But the play at knightlygenerosity was too shallow. For at the time Maximilian believed that hewould not suffer in any case. Later, though, when he knew that he mustdie, then with simple earnestness he had pleaded for Miramon and Mejia,and forgot himself altogether. But Juarez had hardly more thanacknowledged the telegram, and now in the cell next him Miramon wasconfessing, and in the cell on his other side Mejia waited. Each ofthese two men would leave a wife and child.
Someone knocked. "No, father, not yet," Maximilian answered gently,although his mood was impatience. The confessor sighed in protestagainst the waste of precious time, but he did not move away, as he hadalready twice before during the night. Instead he came and stood at thecorridor window. His lip trembled pityingly. There was news, he said.
Maximilian pushed back the book, and was on his feet. The priest meetinghis eager look, shook his head sadly.
"It comes from--from Miramar."
Maximilian fell back. One hand groped out involuntarily, as in appealbefore 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, norsensed the menace in every slightest sound of the dark night outside.There was something else. "Death?" At first he did not consciouslystrive for an answer. But the question kept falling, and falling again,as a lash. The vulgar hands which plied the scourge, the stupid yellowfaces, these no longer mattered. He felt the blows themselves, only theblows.
She had died, the poor maniac! She had died, a thing for the lowliestpity. And this was true of the haughty child of Orleans because she hadwanted a throne. Slowly her husband raised his head; and staring at thewall, his tear-dimmed eyes opened wider and wider. Because she hadwanted a throne? Because she had wanted a dais above the meek and lowly,above those who now pitied her! His eyes fell on the UniversalHistory--the family record, and there grew in his eyes a look ofdetestation. Groaning suddenly, he buried his head again in his arms.
At dawn he too was to die, and because he too had craved a sceptre. Yet,and yet, he had meant to be an instrument of good. Born of kings,anointed by the Vicar of Christ, he had come as agent from the Almighty.But God had failed to sustain him, God had--again the blue eyes raised,but dry now, and stark in terror. "Yes, yes, yes," so his reeling soulcried to him, "there _is_ a God! There is, there is!" One sharpbreath, and the mortal fear passed. In ghastly panic he crept back fromthe brink, either of the atheist's despair or of the madman's chaos. Butthe cost was heavy. Since God did exist, and God yet had failed him,then it was the man's Divine Right that must be false. He, only a man,had mistaken his Destiny. Nay, had he a Destiny? Or why, more thananother man? Here, then, was the cost. To keep his hope of Heaven, hestepped down among the millions and millions. His Divine Right,crumbling under the grandeur of partition among the millions, became forhimself the most infinitesimal of shares, neither greater nor less thanthat of any other human being. But glorified now by the holy alchemy ofCharity, the tiny grain became divine indeed, and he beheld it as aglowing spark, his own inalienable share in the rights of man. So, for amoment, the poet prince knew again his old-time exultation. Even Truth,he now perceived, had her sublimities.
But the pall of horror fell again. To-morrow he was to die. He was todie because his life long he had sought to rob others of the tiny grain,of their God-given dignity as men, and that too, even as they wereawaking to its possession. The vanity, the presumptuous, inconsistentvanity of it all! Under the dark mediaeval cloak he had plannedenlightenment, he, who had tried to rule without parliament, withoutconstitution! He would have made a people believe in God's injustice, inGod's choice of a man like them to be a demigod over them. Hence theblasphemous demigod had now to answer to human law. And it was meet andright. Purgatory was beginning on the eve of his death.
He, the torch of Progress! Maximilian smiled scornfully on himself. Hewas only a clod of grit caught in the world's great wheels. The foreignsubstance had wrought a discordant screech for a moment, and then wasmercilessly ground into powder and thrust out of the bearings. Hepondered on the first days of the Family Group, when there wasextenuation; more, when there was necessity, for a king. At any rate themonarch then earned, or could earn, his pomp and state by servicesactually rendered. And now? The Hapsburg decided that there was not amore contempt
ible parasite on the body politic. The crowned head wassimply the first among paupers. He had his bowl of porridge, which wasthe civil list.
The doomed prince sank to a depth of shame that may not be conceived. Hewas humanity's puny infant. He had dawdled among men centuries olderthan himself. His whole being was out of harmony with the universe. Fatehad held his soul fast during those Dark Ages when he might have strivennobly, and now had cast it forth, an anachronism. It was a soulmisplaced in eternity. The dire realization grew and grew, and with itthe tragic agony, until with a sudden and the bitterest of cries heflung up his arms and fell heavily across the table.
"My life!" he moaned in piteous begging for something he might not have."My life, to live my life over again!"
In the first light of morning Escobedo came. The Republican generalunfolded a paper, and began to read. But instead of the death sentence,it was reprieve. President Juarez had postponed execution for threedays.
"Three days?" Maximilian repeated, wearily shaking his head. "If yourRepublic could give me as many centuries, but three days!--Three days,in which to _live_ my life!"
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