"True?" I repeated, with horror.
"True, O prince! It is impossible for me to conceal or prevaricate. I promised to confide in you; but I have kept back till the last the whole truth! I can do so no longer!" She caught by my arm to sustain her tottering form.
"Is not Remeses, then, your son?" I cried.
"No."
"Is he a Hebrew?"
"Yes."
"Then this letter of Mœris is all true?"
"All, as to the fact that Remeses is a Hebrew!"
Such was the rapid colloquy which followed. O my dear mother, no mortal can estimate the amount of agony which overwhelmed my soul at this intelligence! I sank upon the pedestal of a statue near me, and covering my face with my hands, burst into tears. The queen did not speak, but suffered my paroxysm of grief and mortification to exhaust itself. At length I raised my head. I felt for her—felt, oh how profoundly, for the unhappy Remeses—ignorant of his calamity, and engaged, even then, in the vigils and rites which were to prepare him to ascend the throne! I could now understand all that had been inexplicable in the queen's conduct, unravel her mysterious language, see the motive of all her acts. I no longer marvelled that she, loving Remeses with all a mother's love, trembled before Mœris and his secret, and gave him all he demanded as the price of silence. But when he asked for her throne as the bribe for secrecy, it was more than her spirit could bear; and unable alone, unaided, to meet him in his demand, she sought counsel of me and sympathy; and little by little made known to me, as I have narrated, the secret she would have sacrificed her life to conceal, if she could thereby have concealed it forever from Remeses.
"Poor, noble, unhappy Remeses!" I ejaculated.