"And, to console yourself, you joined in the popular cry. 'Vox populi vox Dei,' I suppose, is your pious motto."
"Mother!" cried Eugene, springing to his feet, "crush me, if you will, under the weight of your anger, but do not stretch me upon the rack of your scorn. I am no devotee; and, if the king, my family, and yourself, are, forcing me into a career which is repugnant to every instinct of my manhood, pity me, if you will, but do not insult me."
"Pity you!" sneered the countess. "I am a woman; but he who would venture to pity ME, would receive my glove in his face for his insolence. Go, faint heart! You are fit for nothing but a whining priest, for there is not a spark of manhood within your sluggish breast. No generous blood of the princes of Savoy mantles in your sallow check; 'tis the ichorous fluid of the churchman Mazarin that- -"
"Mother!" thundered Eugene, with a force that gave the lie to her derisive words—"mother, you shall go no further in your disdain of me, for the blood of Savoy is seething within my veins, and I may, perchance, forget that she who so affronts my father's son, is my mother!"
"You have already forgotten," replied the countess, coldly. "My answer to your infamous charge shall be made not to you, but to your ancestors."
So saying, she bent her steps toward the ducal throne, and seating herself thereon, addressed her son:
"Eugene of Savoy, Prince of Carignan, Bourbon, and Piedmont, bend your knee before the mother that bore you, and hearken to her words."
The prince obeyed, and knelt at the foot of the throne.
The countess raised her arm, and pointed to the portraits that hung: around. "You have been witnesses," said she, addressing them all, "to the outrage which has been put upon me to-day by him who inherits your name, but not your worth. If I am the guilty wretch which he has pronounced me to be, strike me to the earth for my crimes, and justify his parricidal words. But you know that I am innocent, and that, with bitter tears, I lamented the death of my murdered husband!"
"Murdered!" exclaimed Eugene. "It is, then, true that he was murdered?"