CHAPTER VIII.

PARDON.


Four days had elapsed since the execution at Schönbrunn. Baron von
Kolbielsky had been forced to attend it and was then conveyed to Vienna to
spend dreary, lonely days at the police station in the Krebsgasse.

He had vainly asked at least to be led before his judges to receive his
sentence. The jailer, to whom Kolbielsky uttered these requests whenever he
entered, always replied merely with a silent shrug of the shoulders, and
went away as mute as he had come.

But yesterday, late in the evening, he had entered, accompanied by the
Chief Commissioner Göhausen, two magistrates, and a clergyman. With a
solemn, immovable official countenance Commissioner Göhausen opened the
document which his subordinate handed to him, and, in a loud voice, read
its contents. It was a sentence of death. The death-sentence of Baron
Friedrich Carl Glare von Kolbielsky "on account of sympathy and complicity
in a murderous assault upon the sacred life of his annointed imperial ally
and friend, Napoleon, emperor of the French."[F] Early the following
morning, at dawn, Baron Friedrich Carl Glare von Kolbielsky must be shot at
Schönbrunn.

Kolbielsky had listened to this death-warrant with immovable composure--no
word, no entreaty for pardon escaped his lips. But he requested the