A sudden and respectful hush acknowledged the presence of the Sovereign; Ferdinand's brows were darkly knit, his lip compressed, his eyes flashing sternly over the dense crowd; but he asked no question, nor relaxed his hasty stride till he stood beside the litter on which, covered with a mantle, the murdered One was lying.

For a single minute he evidently paused, and his countenance, usually so controlled as never to betray emotion, visibly worked with some strong feeling, which seemed to prevent the confirmation of his fears, by the trifling movement of lifting up the mantle.

But at length, and with a hurried movement, it was cast aside; and there lay that noble form, cold, rigid in death! The King pushed the long, jetty hair, now clotted with gore, from the cheek on which it had fallen; and he recognized, too well, the high, thoughtful brow, now white, cold as marble; the large, dark eye, whose fixed and glassy stare had so horribly replaced the bright intelligence, the sparkling lustre so lately there.

The clayey, sluggish white of death was already on his cheek; his lip, convulsively compressed, and the left hand tightly clenched, as if the soul had not been thus violently reft from the body, without a strong: pang of mortal agony.

His right hand had stiffened round the hilt of his unsheathed sword, for the murderous blow had been dealt from behind, and with such fatal aim, that death must have been almost instantaneous, and the tight grasp of his sword the mere instinctive movement of expiring nature.