ALEXANDER
Well—possibly!... And maybe all is best
That he engrafts his lineage not on us.—
But, honestly, Napoléon none the less
Has been my friend, and I regret the dream
And fleeting fancy of a closer tie!
EMPRESS-MOTHER
Ay; your regrets are sentimental ever.
That he’ll be writ no son-in-law of mine
Is no regret to me! But an affront
There is, no less, in his evasion on’t,
Wherein the bourgeois quality of him
Veraciously peeps out. I would be sworn
He set his minions parleying with the twain—
Yourself and Francis—simultaneously,
Else no betrothal could have speeded so!
ALEXANDER
Despite the hazard of offence to one?
EMPRESS-MOTHER
More than the hazard; the necessity.
ALEXANDER
There’s no offence to me.
EMPRESS-MOTHER
There should be, then.
I am a Romanoff by marriage merely,
But I do feel a rare belittlement
And loud laconic brow-beating herein!
ALEXANDER
No, mother, no! I am the Tsar—not you,
And I am only piqued in moderateness.
Marriage with France was near my heart—I own it—
What then? It has been otherwise ordained.
[A silence.]
EMPRESS-MOTHER
Here comes dear Anne Speak not of it before her.
[Enter the GRAND-DUCHESS, a girl of sixteen.]
ANNE
Alas! the news is that poor Prussia’s queen,
Spirited Queen Louisa, once so fair,
Is slowly dying, mother! Did you know?
ALEXANDER [betraying emotion]
Ah!—such I dreaded from the earlier hints.
Poor soul—her heart was slain some time ago.