After a desperate resistance, he fell,
covered with wounds, and died "in the tall grass of the douga."
I presume all do not know that this pleading for ten minutes' delay was
a habit of the young prince from early childhood.
A correspondent of a leading Paris journal interviewed the empress as
she was about leaving for the scene of the tragedy that had wrecked all
her earthly hopes, and drew her into conversation on the subject of her
son.
She talked freely during the interview, but with an evident anguish of
spirit, which seemed only the more sad from her effort at control.
During this interview, while speaking of the childhood of her son, the
prince, she unconsciously revealed the trait in his character that had
caused all this woe,--to her, wrecked hopes and a broken heart; to him,
the probable loss of a throne, an earthly future, and his life.
After describing her as still lovely in her lonely grief, the writer
from whom we quote said:--
"The empress had now risen and stood, slightly trembling with emotion,
when, stepping rapidly and gracefully across the room, she opened a
cabinet, from which she took a pocketbook, and read therefrom on a leaf,
'Going with Carey,'--the last words ever written by the prince; then she
added,--'Of all that Captain Carey has ever written in regard to my son,
those fatal ten minutes alone, I hold to be true.
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