For Mary, acting like another Mary, though not sitting at his feet then, as the other did on that occasion, but up by his head, was busy giving him water to drink from a big goblet, not from a cup, so that drinking might not be too difficult for him, as his palate was inflamed and his tongue too and his larynx, and she wanted to refresh him. Then he addressed some firm and manly counsels to the Empress, which were his last ones. ” Why do you abandon yourself in this way to your grief for my death, and compel us to anticipate the end which is hastening towards us ? why do you not think of yourself and your future difficulties, instead of giving yourself up entirely to the flood of grief that has overwhelmed you?
” This he said to her, but it only tore open the Empress’ wounds of sorrow the more. I myself tried every shift, and by God who knows all, I swear to the friends still living and to the men who will read this history later, that I was in no wise better than a madman, for I had become wholly absorbed in my grief. At that time indeed I despised philosophy and learning for I was wholly occupied with my father and in service for him. At one moment I watched the movements of his pulse and studied his respiration, then at another I would turn to my mother and cheer her up as much as possible.
But … the regions were quite incurable . . . the Emperor could not recover from his last faint and the Empress’s soul was hastening to depart at the same time as the Emperor’s. Thus was I placed . . . and in very truth in the words of the Psalmist, “The pains of death encompassed” us at that hour. And then I felt I was losing my senses . . . for I had grown mad and did not know (what would become of me] and whither I should turn, when I looked at the Empress sunk in the sea of her troubles, and the Emperor, with his continual faints, drawing near to the end of his life.
We carried the Emperor
But he managed to recover from his second faint, as my dearest sister Mary sprinkled cold water and essence of roses on him, and he ordered her to do the same for the Empress. Soon he fen into his third faint … and a change of place for the imperial couch seemed advisable … on the part of those busied about his body, and we carried the Emperor on his couch to another part of the five-storied building, in the hope that he might breathe fresher air and recover from his faint. For that room looked to the North and there were no houses … to the doors.
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