spot. I almost fainted. But Hoffmann came in then and picked me up under his arm. He was drunk even then, shouting like a madman."

"No fate for a guardsman, eh, Rudy?"

Rudolphe smiled. "Back through the lines we went in a carr- iage. I found out then, Maxie. Royalty was dead no matter what happened in Paris. Those soldiers were not rabble, Max. Lines and lines of them on the road, shopkeepers and farmers with their feet bound up in rags, blood on their caps. Not rabble, Max, but men. "With the rest of us, Rudy, you found out too late. It's al- ways too late in war it seems.

H

"

Rudolphe sighed at his visitors remark. "I could have been a good spy even so. They let me walk about the headquarters, even showing me maps. They thought I was too stupid to know what I was doing. All of them bowed and laughed at me when they called me Your Highness. But there was no use for a spy then. It was too late."

"What then?" the visitor asked.

"They came for Hoffmann that same night. He never had a chance to touch me. He was shot in the morning with some others. They brought me back to the city and put me in prison. I remember how I had to beg for a mirror and when I got it I broke it in half and shaved myself with the broken glass. I was terrified I would be shot as a spy if they found out."

"And if they didn't?"

"All through the city they were shouting 'hang the princess' only I was a queen then with the royal family dead. What a choice I had--hanged or shot."

"What irony life is full of, eh?"

"But then that speech by the new president--you remember it, Max?--It changed everything. 'Let us be done with killing,' he said. I memorized the whole thing. 'The royal family is dead. The princess has left a convent and entered a world she did not make and does not understand. She would be a young queen now. Let us leave this queen to mourn her dead as we mourn ours. And, if she will have no children, let her live among us in peace'."

"They let you go then, Rudy?"

28.