Now the Emperor’s successor had already gone away secretly to the house set apart for him, seeing the Emperor’s … and hastened his going and hurried to the great palace. The city at that time … was disturbed, but not entirely … But the Empress said, ” Let everything go to destruction ” . . . and wailed ” the diadem and the kingdom and the power and every Empire and thrones and principalities, and let us start the dirge.” And I joined in her wailing, forgetting all else, and mourned with her and . . . they tore their hair with shrill lamentations. But we restored her to her senses. For the Emperor was at his last gasp and, as the saying is, was ‘letting his soul break loose.’
On the ground at his head the Empress had thrown herself still dressed … and with her red shoes and . . . she was wounded and did not know how (to still] the burning sorrow of her heart. Some of the Asclepiadse came back again and after waiting a little, felt the Emperor’s pulse … the beating of his arteries … all the same they dissembled about the fatal moment and held out fair hopes which were not justified.
Emperor’s body
But they did this with a definite purpose for they thought that, when life departed from the Emperor’s body, the Empress would breathe her last too. But the intelligent Empress did not know whether to believe or disbelieve them. She believed because she had long known them as skilled men, but she felt she must disbelieve them because she saw that the Emperor’s life stood on the razor’s edge. So standing on the balance, as it were, she often looked steadfastly at me and waited for my oracular decision as she had been wont to do at other critical moments. And she waited for the prophecy I should give.
And Mary, my mistress and dearest of my sisters, the ornament of our race, the constant woman, the stronghold of every virtue, stood between the Emperor and Empress, near his hand, and sometimes prevented her looking straight at the Emperor. But I again put my right hand on his wrist and watched the movement of his pulse, and … her putting her hands to her face . . . the veil. For in the situation she was in she intended to change her imperial dress, but I stopped her, whenever I noticed a little strength . . . in the pulse. But I was mistaken … for what seemed to me … was not strength but since the great … of breathing … the working of the artery and of the lung was interrupted.
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