"Brother!" repeated Joseph, sternly. "You say that you have overheard us. If so, you know that my sister is solitary and unhappy. Since you have no love for her, you are no brother to me; for she, poor child, is the tie that unites us! Look at her, sire; look at her sweet, innocent, tear-stricken face! What has she done that you should thrust her from your heart, and doom her to confront, alone, the sneers and hatred of your cruel relatives? She is pure, and her heart is without a stain. I tell you so—I, who in unspeakable anxiety have watched her through hired spies. Had I found her guilty I would have been the first to condemn her; but Antoinette is good, pure, virtuous, and she has but one defect—want of thought. It was your duty to guide her, for you received her from her mother's hands a child—a young, harmless, unsuspecting child. What has she ever done that you should refuse her your love?"
"Ask, rather, what have I done, that my relatives should have kept us so far asunder?" replied Louis, with emotion. "Ask those who have poisoned my ears with calumnies of my wife, why they should have sought to deny me the only compensation which life can offer to my royal station—the inestimable blessing of loving and being loved. But away with gloomy retrospection! I shall say but one word more of the past. Your majesty has been watched, and your visit here discovered. I was told that you were seeking to identify the queen with her mother's empire—using your influence to make her forget France, and plot dishonor to her husband's crown. I resolved to prove the truth or falsehood of these accusations myself. I thank Heaven that I did so; for from this hour I shall honor and regard you as a brother."
"I shall reciprocate, sire, if you will promise to be kind to my sister?"
The king looked at Marie Antoinette, who, seated on the sofa whence her brother had risen, was weeping bitterly. Louis went toward her, and, taking both her hands in his, pressed them passionately to his lips. "Antoinette," said he, tenderly, "you say that I do not love you. You have not then read my heart, which, filled to bursting with love for my beautiful wife, dared not ask for response, because I had been told that you—you—but no—I will not pain you with repetition of the calumny. Enough that I am blessed with your love, and may at last be permitted to pour out the torrent of mine! Antoinette, will you be my wife?"
He held open his arms, and looked—as lovers alone can look. The queen well knew the meaning of that glance, and, with a cry of joy, she rose and was pressed to his heart. He held her for some moments there, and then, for the first time in their lives, the lips of husband and wife met in one long, burning kiss of love.
"My beloved, my own," whispered Louis. "Mine forever—nothing on earth shall part us now."
Marie Antoinette was speechless with happiness. She leaned her head upon her husband's breast and wept for joy, while he fondly stroked and kissed tier shining hair, and left the trace of a tear with every kiss.
Presently he turned an imploring look upon the emperor, who stood by, contemplating the lovers with an ecstasy to which he had long been a stranger.
"My brother," said Louis, "for I may call you so now—seven years ago, our hands were joined together by the priest; but, the policy that would have wounded Austria through me, has kept us asunder. This is our wedding-day, this is the union of love with love. Be you the priest to bless the rites that make us one till death."
The emperor came forward, and, solemnly laying his hands upon the heads of the king and queen, spoke in broken accents "God bless you, beloved brother and sister—God give you grace to be true to each other through good and evil report. Be gentle and indulgent one toward the other, that, from this day forward, your two hearts may become as one! Farewell! I shall take with me to Austria the joyful news of your happiness. Oh, how Maria Theresa will rejoice to know it, and how often will the thought of this day brighten my own desolate hearth at Vienna! Farewell!"