While the men thus gave indulgence to their indignation
and their grief, their officers were even mere painfully
affected. The body of the ill-fated Charles had been
borne to his apartment, where, divested of its disguise,
it had again been inducted in such apparel as was deemed
suited to the purpose. Extended on the very bed on which
he lay at the moment when she, whose maniac raving, and
forcible detention, had been the immediate cause of his
destruction, had preferred her wild but fruitless
supplication for mercy, he exhibited, even in death, the
same delicate beauty that had characterised him on that
occasion; yet, with a mildness and serenity of expression
on his still, pale features, strongly in contrast with
the agitation and glow of excitement that then distinguished
him. Never was human loveliness in death so marked as in
Charles de Haldimar; and but for the deep wound that,
dividing his clustering locks, had entered from the very
crown of the head to the opening of his marble brow, one
ignorant of his fate might have believed he but profoundly
slept. Several women of the regiment were occupied in
those offices about the corpse, which women alone are
capable of performing at such moments, and as they did
so, suffered their tears to flow silently yet abundantly
over him, who was no longer sensible either of human
grief or of human joy.
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