Joseph was unmindful of this. He had no sympathy with the noble sacrifice which her loving heart had offered to a dying brother. He saw neither her youth nor her grace; he saw but those dark spots upon her back, and he shuddered as she raised her arm to clasp his feet.
"Do not touch me," exclaimed he, starting back. "Your touch is pollution. We are forever divorced. To day the priest joined our bands together, but to-night I part them never more to meet. Farewell."
And hurling at her prostrate form the letter which had betrayed her, he turned and left the room.
CHAPTER XXVII.
AN UNHAPPY MARRIAGE.
It was the morning after the wedding. Maria Theresa had just completed her toilet, and was smiling at her own beautiful image reflected in the looking-glass. She looked every inch an empress in her rich crimson velvet dress, with its long and graceful train, and its border of ermine. Her superb blond hair had been exquisitely dressed by her little favourite Charlotte von Hieronymus. It was sprinkled with gold-powder, and the coiffure was heightened by a little cap of crimson velvet, attached to the hair by arrows of gold set with costly brilliants. The complexion of the empress was so lovely, that she never wore rouge; and surely such eyes as hers needed none of the "adulteries of art" to heighten their brilliancy or beauty. Although she was in her forty-ninth year, and had given birth to sixteen children, Maria Theresa was still beautiful not only youthful in appearance, but youthful in heart, and in the strength and greatness of her intellect. She loved the emperor as fondly as she had done twenty-eight years before, and each of her ten living children was as dear to her maternal heart as if each had been an only child.
She had arrayed herself with unusual magnificence to celebrate the entry of the newly-married couple into Vienna. The imperial cortege was to stop at the cathedral of St. Stephen, there to witness the bridals of twenty-five young couples, all of whom the empress had dowered in honor of her son's second marriage.
"Surely the prayers of these fifty lovers will bring happiness upon the heads of my son and his wife," said the empress to herself. "They need prayers indeed, for poor Josepha is very unlike our peerless Isabella, and I fear she will not be attractive enough to cause the dead to be forgotten. Still, she seems mild and kind-hearted, and I have already read in her eyes that she is in love with Joseph. I hope this will lead him to love her in return. Sometimes a man will love a woman through pity, afterward through habit."
A nervous and impatient knock at her door interrupted the current of the empress's thoughts; the door was flung open without further ceremony, and the King of Rome entered the room. He was pale and agitated, and to his mother's affectionate welcome he replied by a deep inclination of the head.
The empress perceived at once that something was wrong, and her heart beat rapidly.