good frau?” he added, partly recovering his self-control. Advancing a few steps, and slightly separated from her attendants, Kunigunde slowly drew aside her veil, and looked quietly at the emperor.
“Truly as frau do I come, your majesty,” she said, “and my commission is such as any bereaved frau might undertake. Deprived in one hour of home, country, dignity, husband, protection, and of child, I represent such accumulation of unhappiness as may well commend me even to the sternness of my country’s subjugator. A queen indeed, and yet not a queen. I resignedly surrender all state, rank and honor. With acquiescence I bow to the strokes that have overwhelmed my royal prosperity. But while I can renounce all earthly pre-eminence, while I can lay aside with serenity the homage of faithful subjects and the honors of courts, I cannot surrender or divest myself of those rights of a woman, and a wife, that the decrees of God, the solemnities of the church, the law of the land, and the dictates of humanity have conferred upon me. Formerly the representative of the exaltation of womanhood in Bohemia, I now simply represent the claims of woman in her depression, her solitude and her bereavement. Nay more, highness, I represent the ordinary claims of humanity on behalf of one not the least among his fellows. In life he vindicated the respect due to every human being of his nation as typified by himself the prince, and in death he demands the reverence of all men for his still unburied remains. In the name of our common humanity, in the name of
