"I will kill every man who knows it! They shall die--they shall all die, if you but remain my own."
"And if they were to die, and if no one knew but you and I--yes, mother, if you were dead and the secret were buried in my bosom, I should not think it safe even there; I should hide myself and my disgrace in the lowest depths of the earth."
The princess covered her pale face with her thin hands. But this was not the moment to abandon herself to idle grief. She knew her son's character too well not to be aware that it was a question of life and death.
"Raimund," she said, starting up again, "you do not kill yourself only; you kill me too! You are my all, my sun, and my light! I never had another child but you. You do not know what it is to have a child and to love it, especially when one is as unhappy as I have been! I never loved the count. I could not have loved a roué who has wasted his fortune and his health in abominable profligacy. I became his wife because--because the czar would have it so. And I was so young at that time, and so frivolous and thoughtless, grown up in all the splendor and luxury of the most splendid and most luxurious court on earth! I was not a faithful wife--nor was the count a faithful husband. It mattered little to him; but he wished to get a hold on me in order to force me to provide for his mad expenditures. He had long watched me--till at last, I do not know yet by what unlucky accident or by whose treachery, he discovered my secret. From that moment my life has been a perpetual torture; I have grown old before my time. I never had anything but you and your love to warm my heart in this icy-cold world. If you rob me of that also, I must succumb. Raimund, is this your gratitude for all my love?"
The son had listened to his mother's cunning words, which interwove truth and fiction so skilfully, with an air as black as a wall of thunder-laden clouds.
"Show me the possibility of living," he replied, "and I will live. As it is, I cannot live. I cannot endure the consciousness that my blood is no better than that which flows in the veins of my groom."
"Am I not your mother?"
"Is that low person not my father?"
"Yes, Raimund, he is, and to him you owe your proud strength; to him you owe it, that all men appear weaklings by your side. Would you rather be the count's son and inherit his wretched feebleness, his poisoned blood? And do you fancy that in our veins no other blood flows but noble blood?--that your case is the only one in which a degenerate race has been renewed by an admixture of sound but humble blood? Shall I tell you a few anecdotes of our own circles? And do you think it is different in higher and the very highest families?"
The princess rose lightly from her chair and whispered something in her son's ear. But he grimly shook his head.