"What is there about me? Sum me up. I am robbed on every side by any one who cares to fleece me. Whenever I am about to accomplish anything I fall down as if knocked on the head!"
She rose from her seat.
"You let yourself be robbed because you are princely! You have plainly left behind you every weakness of your childhood. Look at him in his strength, Monsieur Abbé! He has sucked in the vigor of a new country! The failing power of an old line of kings is renewed in him! You could not have nourished such a dauphin for France in your exiled court! Burying in the American soil has developed what you see for yourself—the king!"
"He is a handsome man," Abbé Edgeworth quietly admitted.
"Oh, let his beauty alone! Look at his manhood—his kinghood!"
"Of what use is his kinghood if he will not exercise it?"
"He must!"
She turned upon me fiercely.
"Have you no ambition?"
"Yes, madame. But there are several kinds of ambition, as there are several kinds of success. You have to knock people down with each kind, if you want it acknowledged. As I told you awhile ago, I am tenacious beyond belief, and shall succeed in what I undertake."