for I heard the comments of
the crowd.

"He looks paler than his wont," said one.

"You'd look pale if you lived as he does," was the highly disrespectful
retort.

"He's a bigger man than I thought," said another.

"So he had a good jaw under that beard after all," commented a third.

"The pictures of him aren't handsome enough," declared a pretty girl,
taking great care that I should hear. No doubt it was mere flattery.

But, in spite of these signs of approval and interest, the mass of
the people received me in silence and with sullen looks, and my dear
brother's portrait ornamented most of the windows--which was an ironical
sort of greeting to the King. I was quite glad that he had been spared
the unpleasant sight. He was a man of quick temper, and perhaps he would
not have taken it so placidly as I did.

At last we were at the Cathedral. Its great grey front, embellished
with hundreds of statues and boasting a pair of the finest oak doors in
Europe, rose for the first time before me, and the sudden sense of my
audacity almost overcame me. Everything was in a mist as I dismounted. I
saw the Marshal and Sapt dimly, and dimly the throng of gorgeously robed
priests who awaited me. And my eyes were still dim as I walked up the
great nave, with the pealing of the organ in my ears. I saw nothing of
the brilliant throng that filled it, I hardly distinguished the stately
figure of the Cardinal as he rose from the archiepiscopal throne to
greet me. Two faces only stood out side by side clearly before my
eyes--the face of a girl, pale and lovely, surmounted by a crown of the
glorious Elphberg hair (for in a woman it is glorious), and the face
of a man, whose full-blooded red cheeks, black hair, and dark deep eyes
told me that at last I was in presence of my brother, Black Michael. And
when he saw me his red cheeks went pale all in a moment, and his helmet
fell with a clatter on the floor. Till that moment I believe that he had
not realized that the King was in very truth come to Strelsau.

Of what followed next I remember nothing. I knelt before the altar and
the Cardinal anointed my head. Then I rose to my feet, and stretched out
my hand and took from him the crown of Ruritania and set it on my head,
and I swore the old oath of the King; and (if it were a sin, may it be
forgiven me) I received the Holy Sacrament there before them all. Then
the great organ pealed out again, the Marshal bade the heralds proclaim
me, a