“I have not had a doubt of your resistance. I have as little of my firmness of purpose. You have not been sufficiently disciplined. A princess marries whom and when her father and sovereign dictates. You were my youngest, in many ways exceptional, and very much alone. I have been more indulgent, more lax, than I should. But that is over. From this moment you will recognize that I am your emperor as well as your father.”
“We are no longer in the Middle Ages, nor yet in the middle of the last century. Your subjects are free to marry whom they please, or to remain unmarried if they choose.”
“Constitutions have shorn monarchs of too much power over their subjects, but in his own family the power of an emperor is as absolute as it ever was. To the law you would have no appeal did I choose to practise upon you the tortures of the Inquisition here in my palace, to starve you in a cell, to cause you to disappear forever from human sight. Please understand once for all that you are my property, given into my care by Almighty God; and for your own salvation and for the honor of my house I shall do what I think best with you.”
“And if I still refuse?”
“You will remain a prisoner in these rooms until you consent. Your servants will attend to every want, you will have the society of Maria Leopoldina, and you may take your exercise in the corridor. You will see no one else. There will be a guard day and night at each end of the corridor. If you make any attempt to bribe these guards, or to communicate with any one in the court-yard, you will be moved elsewhere and deprived of exercise. But I do not wish to be forced into undue severity, and you may remain here so long as you transgress no rules.”
“Good God!” she exclaimed. “And this is the twentieth century! Have I heard aright? Am I a prisoner under an armed guard? Am I more helpless in the eyes of the law than the meanest of your subjects? May any illiterate peasant woman seek redress in the courts of justice while a princess of the realm, whose supreme advantages have set her apart from mankind, is but a chattel among the possessions of her father? I suppose I have known this. But I have managed to surround myself with a different atmosphere. But you—you are a man of the world, and all your faculties are still alert—do you mean to tell me that you have not outgrown the barbarism of the past?”
“You may call it by what name you will. I shall go now, and you will meditate—”
But Ranata had flashed between him and the door, and he knew that he could not pass her. He was deeply annoyed that he had not retreated in time, but he stood immobile, looking coldly into her distorted face.
“No,” she said hoarsely, but still retaining an appreciable measure of self-control; “you will not leave this room until you have heard the truth for once. If you are no longer my father but my tyrant, then from this moment I am your most rebellious subject and nothing more. And I would that I could open my veins and drain out every drop of royal blood. Has it ever occurred to you, sir, that the great enlightened masses not only in America but here in central Europe regard us not with the hatred of half a century ago, but with impatience and contempt; that they look upon us as anomalies, anachronisms, ornamental nuisances, and do not rise to let out our blood on the guillotine only because they are well aware of the peaceful disintegration, the irresistible rising of the tide of independence and liberty? If your people love you—here, not in Hungary!—it is for your personal qualities, not because you represent an idea which, in their estimate of life and civilization, they have relegated to the past, with crinolines and Bath chairs. Do you suppose that what loyalty you enjoy will be transferred to the Heir? You know it will not. That alone is proof enough that the people are carelessly—perhaps unconsciously—determined to have what they want—monarchy, only if it happen to suit them at the moment. There is only one monarchy on the face of the earth enlightened enough to grasp this fact before it is too late, and that is England. There alone is monarchy not ridiculous—and not threatened. What do you suppose is the meaning of the immense and undaunted increase of socialism in Germany? What is the meaning of the incalculable and persistent forces of disintegration in this empire? Look at Italy. At Spain. At Turkey. At Russia—that dares not sleep. Only the insignificant little monarchies are comparatively safe from themselves, being occupied with apprehension of the greater. Even in the United States the unsatisfied tide of liberty is rising. McKinley was not shot by a lunatic, a fanatic, nor by a member of any deadly organization; the assassin was merely one of the millions of dissatisfied poor in the richest country on earth, where he saw liberty and justice becoming as paralytic as in Europe. Did the portent of that assassination never occur to you? And with this spirit abroad in the world we dare over here to play at divine rights, at being hereditary rulers of millions more enlightened than ourselves—we—pygmies—marionettes—who may be born as foolish as the last Emperor of Austria and King of Hungary, who thought that all eagles had two heads, and yet dare to mount a throne and cry ‘I am King!’ No one has ever more devoutly tried to do what he conceived to be his inherited duty than I have done. I have, for many years, been deliberately blind. During these last months in Hungary I have held the scales to my eyes lest they fall off. Last night down there in the crypt, where, if you must know, I went in the hope of finding my old idols, I lost most of those scales. To-day I have lost the last of them. If I had it in my power to do, I would give liberty and the broadest sort of constitutional government to every man that breathes. I am mortified that it took the deprivation of my own liberty to force my brain to acknowledge the truth. I would rather I had been less human and welcomed the truth as the result of much deep and intelligent meditation. But to expect the godlike of one of us of royal blood is beyond reason, and I am thankful that I am not too dense to receive illumination from any source. But I loathe my blood. I hope to God I may live to see every monarch now alive a useful member of a republic and no man degraded by being forced to submit to what he had no hand in making. I am sorry to have detained and agitated you; and for any unintentional rudeness I hope your Majesty will forgive me. For you, until to-day, I have had a great respect. For what you stand for it is impossible that I should ever again have anything but the profoundest contempt. I will not detain you any longer except to repeat that you will save yourself a great deal of trouble if you give up at once this idea of marrying me to any man but the one I shall select for myself.”
She no longer looked hideous. The relief of her emotions, the tide of passion which had surged over its dam laden with the profoundest truth of the century, had carried her to the heights of her nature, and she had never been more beautiful—nor more formidable. Not so the Emperor. He was purple, and his heavy underlip trembled. But he preserved his dignity, his soldierly bearing. As she moved aside to let him pass, he bowed courteously to her without speaking and left the room.