'What an optimist you have grown! It is flattering to me,' she answered, as she caressed the children and gave them some crystals of sugar. 'I cannot help seeing things as they are; you know I never could help it; and the relations of parents with their children, which are pretty and idyllic to begin with, are often apt to alter to very grim prose as time goes on, and separate interests arise to part them. Why does no sovereign who ever lived like his or her immediate heir? Why is the crown prince always arrayed against the crown?'

'I am very fond of my crown prince,' said Othmar, as he drew his young son to him.

'He is not a crown prince yet; he is a baby. Wait until he does want to marry that circus-rider, or until you see him take an opposite side in European politics to yourself. It is when the distinct Ego asserts itself in your child, in opposition to your own entity, that the separation begins and the antagonism rises.'

'You will always analyse so mercilessly!'

'I can never be content with the world's commonplaces and sophisms, if you mean that. And on this day, when I am thirty-two years old, no persuasion on earth would convince me that, when the time should come which will make me twice that age, I shall be anything but an unhappy woman. It will not console me in the least that my grandchildren may wish me bonne fête.'

'I wonder if you are serious?'

'I was never more so, I assure you. Life is a series of losses; but a woman's losses outweigh a man's by a million. From the first little line she sees between her eyebrows or about her mouth, existence is nothing but a dégringolade for her. To say that she is compensated for the loss of her empire by becoming a grandmother is wholly absurd.'

'You always allot such a small space to the affections!'

'Madame de Sévigné allotted the largest that any clever woman ever did or could. Do you think the chill philosophies of Madame de Grignan rewarded her? Myself, je n'ai pas cette bosse là. You know it very well. I am fond of these children, because they are yours; but I do not think them in the least a compensation for growing old!'

'As if years mattered to a woman of your wit!'