"You are cruel, my son," said the empress, deprecatingly. "If the countess has been bitter in her reproaches to you, we must remember her grief and her right to reproach us. We should be gentle with misfortune—above all, when we can bring no relief."
"Let him go on, your majesty," murmured the wretched Anna, while her eyes were raised with a look of supreme agony upon the stern face of the emperor.
"Your majesty is right. I am nothing but a Pole, and I will die with my fatherland. Your hands shall close our coffin-lids, for our fates will not cost you a tear. The dear, noble empress has wept for us both, and the remembrance of her sympathy and of your cruelty we will carry with us to the grave."
The emperor's eyes flashed angrily, and he was about to retort, but he controlled himself and approached the empress.
"Your majesty will pardon me if I interrupt your interesting conversation, but state affairs are peremptory, and supersede all other considerations. Your majesty has commanded my presence that I might sign the act of partition. The courier, who is to convey the news to Berlin and St. Petersburg, is ready to go. Allow me to ask if your majesty has signed?"
The countess, who understood perfectly that the emperor, in passing her by, to treat with his mother of this dreadful act of partition, wished to force her to retire, withdrew silently to the door.
But the empress, hurt that her son should have been so unfeeling, went forward, and led her back to her seat.
"No, countess, stay. The emperor says that you represent Poland. Then let him justify his acts to us both, and prove that what he has done is right. I have suffered such anguish of mind over the partition of Poland, that Joseph would lift a load from my heart, if he could show me that it is inevitable. My son, you have come for my signature. Before God, your mother, and Poland herself, justify our deed, and I will sign the act."
"Justify? There are many things which we may defend without being able to justify them: and stern necessity often forces us to the use of measures which conscience disapproves."
"Prove to me, then, the necessity which has forced us to dismember a country whose people have never injured us," said the empress, authoritatively.