And more blood will be spilt——and the ravaged country will people the realm of the shades——No, no, enough of death's——I fear to have my reign handed down as that of a fatal and murderous Sovereign. All this blood! All this blood spilled for me! It seems to me that my very hands are red with it!
FAITHFUL PRINCE
The blood of your subjects is inexhaustible, and their devotion is limitless.
EMPRESS [Suddenly becoming very calm and as though beseeching]
But my courage is exhausted. [Pointing to the Soldiers, who are piling wood upon the fire.] I want to die with them.
FAITHFUL PRINCE
Live, that their death may not have been in vain. Live to bring back our young Emperor, whom the Army of the South is protecting for us. Live for us all and for him.
EMPRESS
My son! Oh, speak not that name. Do not, to influence me, do not try to touch upon that string, that alone I forbid you touch. At the very moment when you tore him from me, I had an intuition that I should never see him again, never again gaze upon his dear little face, his beautiful eyes——I have courage to listen to all except when you speak to me of him,——for then, do you not see, I become again a mother, nothing but a mother, like other women, and I have no longer, no longer the strength.——[She turns her head and begins to sob.] Oh, not to belong to one's self, not even to be allowed to lay down on the roadside the burden of one's life!——To be the impersonal idol of a whole people, to be dealt with in accordance with their will! To be a wretched fetish, whom all watch as carefully as the tablets of their ancestors on the family altar!——
FAITHFUL PRINCE