"Repress your jealousy," replied the King in banter.
"I experience only sadness," replied the Duke with sincerity, "She suffers greatly and I suffer with her. She has not slept for three nights nor eaten for three days. She passes hours in prayer—"
"That is your fault!"
"Mine, sire?" exclaimed the Duke.
"Emphatically so, my little Louis. When a woman, such as is your wife, a woman who would die rather than even look at another man,—when she becomes fad, 'tis that her husband is indifferent. Listen; the time has come when I must speak the truth: you have behaved like a simpleton. You have never won her heart. You have treated her with a veneration such as the devote evinces toward the marble statues of saints."
"Sire, you know well that I am more in my element at the head of a regiment than with women. I do not understand them."
"The devil! This cursed generation seems to have been born blasé, destitute even of a sense of beauty. The reason that I love your brother Ferdinand is that he is the living reproduction of our ancestor, Henry of Navarre. The 'ultras' are scandalized at his romance with the English girl. Well, we must beautify our life with illusion or we should become stone. I have kept my heart in its place always, even though I have been a wretched invalid. Not that I have given myself up to material joys. We become divine through that exaltation evoked by the presence of woman. The Countess is the intermediary between soul and faith,—faith in the beautiful. You know that here there is no possibility of descent into matter—An old man in ruined health!"
The Duke frowned, struggling between respect for his uncle and repugnance towards his theories.
"In short, Louis, my aching limbs are already in the grave. I have done ail in my power to protect the institutions in my charge. I have subjugated my convictions, my reason, my skepticism, in order to be true to the trust confided to me. With my right hand I have restrained the Revolution; with my left the excesses of an imbecile and sanguinary Reaction. Lecazes has aided me and aids me. But Louis, my heir, if you falter, I shall contend no longer, even tho the monarchy perish. In vain will you have combatted at the pass of Ivon, at Ravenheim and afterwards, beside the unfortunate Eugene. Bah! The hardest battles are these of state, my son."
The Duke was moved. When the King discarded his habitual raillery, he evinced genuine majesty. Almost subjugated, he knelt at his uncle's feet, saying: