About an hour and a half the confessor remained alone with her.  At the end of that time he came out, and hastily summoned the attendants, for Margaret, he said, was sinking into a fainting fit.  The confessor himself might have passed through many a fit, so much was he changed by the results of this interview.  I crossed him coming out of the house.  I spoke to him—­I called to him; but he heard me not—­he saw me not.  He saw nobody.  Onward he strode to the cathedral, where Maximilian was sure to be found, pacing about upon the graves.  Him he seized by the arm, whispered something into his ear, and then both retired into one of the many sequestered chapels in which lights are continually burning.  There they had some conversation, but not very long, for within five minutes Maximilian strode away to the house in which his young wife was dying.  One step seemed to carry him upstairs.  The attendants, according to the directions they had received from the physicians, mustered at the head of the stairs to oppose him.  But that was idle:  before the rights which he held as a lover and a husband—­ before the still more sacred rights of grief, which he carried in his countenance, all opposition fled like a dream.  There was, besides, a fury in his eye.  A motion of his hand waved them off like summer flies; he entered the room, and once again, for the last time, he was in company with his beloved.

What passed who could pretend to guess?  Something more than two hours had elapsed, during which Margaret had been able to talk occasionally, which was known, because at times the attendants heard the sound of Maximilian’s voice evidently in tones of reply to something which she had said.  At the end of that time, a little bell, placed near the bedside, was rung hastily.  A fainting fit had seized Margaret; but she recovered almost before her women applied the usual remedies.  They lingered, however, a little, looking at the youthful couple with an interest which no restraints availed to check.  Their hands were locked together, and in Margaret’s eyes there gleamed a farewell light of love, which settled upon Maximilian, and seemed to indicate that she was becoming speechless.  Just at this moment she made a feeble effort to draw Maximilian toward her; he bent forward and kissed her with an anguish that made the most callous weep, and then he whispered something into her ear, upon which the attendants retired, taking this as a proof that their presence was a hindrance to a free communication.  But they heard no more talking, and in less than ten minutes they returned.  Maximilian and Margaret still retained their former position.  Their hands were fast locked together; the same parting ray of affection, the same farewell light of love, was in the eye of Margaret, and still it settled upon Maximilian.  But her eyes were beginning to grow dim; mists were rapidly stealing over them.  Maximilian, who sat stupefied and like one not in his right mind, now, at the gentle request of the women, resigned his seat, for the hand which had clasped his had already relaxed its hold; the farewell gleam of love had departed.  One of the women closed her eyelids; and there fell asleep forever the loveliest flower that our city had reared for generations.