seen you for three days; I do not know what has occurred, for, strangely,
nothing has reached the public."

"The emperor enjoined the most inviolable silence upon us all," said
Schulmeister gloomily. "The whole affair has been treated and concealed as
the most profound secret. The emperor does not wish to have anything known
about it; no one must deem it possible that people have dared to seek to
take his life, to attempt to capture him. I never saw him in such a fury
as when I first told him the plan of the conspirators. His eyes flashed
lightnings, he stamped his feet, clenched his little hands into fists, and
stretched them threateningly toward the invisible conspirators. He vowed to
kill them all, to take vengeance on them all for the unprecedented crime."

"And has he fulfilled the vow?"

"He has. He has punished the conspirators, so far as lay in his power. But
some of them, for instance Baron von Moudenfels, do not belong to the
number of his subjects, but are Austrians. The emperor did not have the
sentence which he pronounced upon his own subjects executed upon them; he
could not at this time, for you know that negotiations for peace have been
opened, and the treaty will be signed immediately. So the emperor did not
wish to constitute himself a judge of Austrian subjects; it is a delicate
attention to the Austrian emperor, and the latter will know how to thank
him for it and to punish the criminals with all the rigor of the law.
Therefore Baron von Moudenfels and Count von Kotte have merely been held as
prisoners, and were compelled to witness the execution to-day."

"What execution?" asked Leonore in horror.

"Colonel Lejeune, Captain de Guesniard, and two sous-lieutenants were shot