“And how do you know I shall not return?”
“Because love is fatal to the chosen Hapsburgs, your Royal Highness.”
“Then they can avoid love,” said the Archduchess impersonally.
“Not when they are made for it. Nature has protected many by a mask as ugly as the plague. When she gives them beauty be sure it is to scourge the proudest house on earth, and to chastise it for centuries of cruelty and oppression.”
“Maria Theresia was beautiful.”
“She was fat. She also had more children than a man ever can remember. Besides, she was not really beautiful.”
“And you are not very logical. Other houses of Europe have records for injustice as great as ours may possibly have.”
“Nature has taken other methods to punish them. Be sure that none shall escape.”
“I suppose you wish to tell my fortune. I have not superstition enough for that, but in the name of my brother I will send you a purse to the servants’ quarters to-night.”
She withdrew into the polite silence with which royalty lays down the burden of audience, but the gypsy held his ground. He thanked her extravagantly, and added: “I am more honest than most gypsies, your Royal Highness—I do not pretend to see too far into the future. But when a man’s heart is black with remorse and bitterness and hatred of life and the reckless indulgence of passions, I can see the end; and when a woman—”