For an instant I was crowned in Mittau, with my mother's tiara.
I saw the king's features turn to granite, and a dark red stain show on his jaws like coloring on stone. The most benevolent men, and by all his traits he was one of the most benevolent, have their pitiless moments. He must have been prepared to combat a pretender before I entered the room. But outraged majesty would now take its full vengeance on me for the unconsidered act of the child he loved.
"First two peasants, Hervagault and Bruneau, neither of whom had the audacity to steal into the confidence of the tenderest princess in Europe with the tokens she must recognize, or to penetrate into the presence," spoke the king: "and now an escaped convict from Ste. Pélagie, a dandy from the Empire!"
I was only twenty, and he stung me.
"Your royal highness," I said, speaking as I believed within my rights, "my sister tries to put a good front on my intrusion into Mittau."
I took the coronet from my head and gave it again to the hand which had crowned me. Marie-Therese let it fall, and it rocked near the feet of the king.
"Your sister, monsieur! What right have you to call Madame d'Angoulême your sister!"
"The same right, monsieur, that you have to call her your niece."
The features of the princess became pinched and sharpened under the softness of her fair hair.
"Sire, if this is not my brother, who is he?"