She drew the whip over the flanks of her horses as she felt that mingled impatience and sadness with which sovereigns remember that they can never be certain they are loved for themselves, and not for all which environs them and lifts them up out of the multitude.
She was angry with herself when she felt that what interested her most during her Parisian sojourn was the report of the debates of the French Chamber in the French journals.
One night the Baron Kaulnitz spoke of Sabran in her hearing.
'He is the most eloquent of the Legitimist party,' he said to some one in her hearing. 'No one supposed that he had it in him; he was a mere idler, a mere man of pleasure, and it was at times said of something worse, but he has of late manifested great talent; it is displayed for a lost cause, but it is none the less admirable as talent goes.'
She heard what he said with pleasure.
Advantage was taken of her momentary return to the world to press on her the choice of a great alliance. Names as mighty as her own were suggested to her, and more than one great prince, of a rank even higher than hers, humbly solicited the honour of the hand which gave no caress except to a horse's neck, a dog's head, a child's curls. But she did not even pause to allow these proposals any consideration; she refused them all curtly, and with a sense of irritation.
'Have you sworn never to marry?' said the Duc de Noira, with much chagrin, receiving her answer for a candidate of his own to whom he was much attached.
'I never swear anything,' she answered. 'Oaths are necessary for people who do not know their own minds. I do know my own.'
'You know that you will never marry?'
'I hardly say that; but I shall never contract a mere alliance. It is horrible—that union eternal of two bodies and souls without sympathy, without fitness, without esteem, merely for sake of additional position or additional wealth.'