"I see it, I see it," cried Joseph, passionately, "but I cannot take it—I cannot play my part in this mockery of a return. No, mother, no, I cannot kiss the hand that has so cruelly dashed my hopes to earth. And you wish to carry your tyranny so far as to exact that I receive it with a smile? Oh, mother, my heart is breaking! Have pity on me, and take back those cruel words; let me go, let me go. Do not make me a byword for the world, that hereafter will refuse me its respect. Let me go, if but for a few weeks, and on the day that you command my return, I will come home. Oh, my heart was too small to hold the love I bore you for your consent to my departure. It seemed to me that I had lust begun to live; the world was full of beauty, and I forgot all the trials of my childhood. For one week I have been young, dear mother; hurl me not back again into that dark dungeon of solitude where so much of my short life has been spent. Do not condemn me to live as I have hitherto lived; give me freedom, give me my manhood's rights!"
"No, no! a thousand times no!" cried the exasperated empress; "I see now that I am right to keep such an unfeeling and ungrateful son at home. He talks of his sufferings forsooth! What has he ever suffered at my hands?"
"What have I suffered?" exclaimed Joseph, whose teeth chattered as if he were having a chill, and who was no longer in a state to suppress the terrible eruption of his heart's agony. "What have I suffered, ask you? I will tell you, empress-mother, what I have suffered since first I could love, or think, or endure. As a child I have felt that my mother loved another son more than she loved me. When my longing eyes sought hers, they were riveted upon another face. When my brother and I have sinned together, he has been forgiven, when I have been punished. Sorrow and jealousy were in my heart, and no one cared enough for me to ask why I wept. I was left to suffer without one word of kindness—and you wondered that I was taciturn, and mocked at my slighted longings for love, and called them by hard names. And then you pointed to my caressed and indulged brother, and bade me be gay like him!"
"My son, my son!" cried the emperor, "control yourself; you know not what you say."
"Let him go on, Francis," said the pale mother, "it is well that I should know his heart at last."
"Yes," continued the maddened archduke, "let me go on, for in my heart there is nothing but misery and slighted affection. Oh, mother, mother!" exclaimed he, suddenly changing from defiance to the most pathetic entreaty, "on my knees I implore you to let me go; have mercy, have mercy upon your wretched son!"
And the young prince, with outstretched hands, threw himself upon his knees before his mother. The long-suppressed tears gushed forth, and the wild tempest of his ungovernable fury was spent, and now he sobbed as if indeed his young heart was breaking.
The emperor could scarcely restrain the impulse he felt to weep with his son; but he came and laid his hand upon the poor boy's head, and looked with passionate entreaty at the empress.
"Dear Theresa," said he, "be compassionate and forgiving. Pardon him, beloved, the hard and unjust words which, in the bitterness of a first sorrow, he has spoken to the best of mothers. Raise him up from the depths of his despair, and grant the boon, for which, I am sure, he will love you beyond bounds."
"I wish that I dared to grant it to yourself, Francis," replied the empress, sadly and tearfully; "but you see that he has made it impossible. I dare not do it. The mother has no right to plead with the empress for her rebellious son. What he has said I freely forgive—God grant that I may forget it! Well do I know how stormy is youth, and I remember that Joseph is my son. It is the wild Spanish blood of my ancestry that boils in his veins, and, therefore, I forgive him with all my heart. But revoke my last sentence—that I cannot do. To do so would be to confirm him in wrong. Rise, my son Joseph—I forgive all your cruel words; but what I have said, I have said. You remain at home."