The eyes of the empress shot fire, but instead of a reply, she bent down to the little Archduchess Josepha, who was just old enough to lisp her father's name, and said:
"Josepha, tell the emperor what festival we celebrate to-day" the little one, turning to her father, said, "To-day is imperial mamma's wedding-day."
"Our wedding-day!" murmured the emperor, "and I could forget it!"
"Oh, no! my dear husband," said the empress, "I am sure that you cannot have forgotten this joyous anniversary. Its remembrance is burned in your heart, and the presence of your children here, my trust, has awakened that remembrance, and carried you back with me to the happy, happy days of our early love."
The voice of the wife was almost tearful, as she spoke those tender words; and the emperor, touched and humbled at the thought of his own oversight, sought to change the subject. "But why," asked he, looking around, "why, if all our other children are here to greet their father, is Joseph absent from this happy family gathering?"
"He has been disobedient and obstinate again," said the empress, with a shrug of her shoulders, "and his preceptor, to punish him, kept him away"
The emperor walked to the door. "Surely," exclaimed he, "on such a day as this, when all my dear children are around me, my son and the future emperor should be the first to bid me welcome."
"Stay, my husband," cried the empress, who had no intention of allowing the emperor to escape so easily from his embarrassment.
"You must be content to remain with us, without the future emperor of Germany, whose reign, I hope I may be allowed to pray, is yet for some years postponed. Or is this a happy device of the future emperor's father to remind me, on my wedding-day, that I am growing old enough to begin to think of the day of my decease?"
The emperor was perfectly amazed. Although he was accustomed to such outbursts on the part of his wife, he searched vainly in his heart for the cause of her intense bitterness to-day. He looked his astonishment; and the empress, mindful of her resolve not to reproach him, tried her best to smile. The emperor shook his head thoughtfully as he watched her face, and said half aloud: "All is not right with thee, Theresa; thou smilest like a lioness, not like a woman."