At
a mighty price our task had been made easy; many might have
doubted the living, none questioned the dead; suspicions which
might have gathered round a throne died away at the gate of a
vault. The king was dead. Who would ask if it were in truth the
king who lay in state in the great hall of the palace, or whether
the humble grave at Zenda held the bones of the last male
Elphberg? In the silence of the grave all murmurs and
questionings were hushed.
Throughout the day people had been passing and repassing through
the great hall. There, on a stately bier surmounted by a crown
and the drooping folds of the royal banner, lay Rudolf
Rassendyll. The highest officer guarded him; in the cathedral the
archbishop said a mass for his soul. He had lain there three
days; the evening of the third had come, and early on the morrow
he was to be buried. There is a little gallery in the hall, that
looks down on the spot where the bier stood; here was I on this
evening, and with me Queen Flavia. We were alone together, and
together we saw beneath us the calm face of the dead man. He was
clad in the white uniform in which he had been crowned; the
ribbon of the Red Rose was across his breast.
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