Vaza and Lycilia--which bestowed all
their sympathy upon their most charming, charitable crown-prince,
indefatigable, omnipresent, mitigating what suffering he could? Was it
because of the colossal, fabulous presents of millions contributed from
the imperial privy purse to the fund for the victims of the disaster?
The result of the elections became known: the new house of deputies
contained a bare, impotent majority of constitutionals. What did it
profit that the liberal papers shrieked of intrigue and undue pressure?
Without and within the city lay the army; each day the emperor showed
himself, with by his side the Duke of Mena-Doni....

The emperor invited the old ministry to remain in office, but dismissed
those of the ministers who were not absolutely authoritative.

The crisis was at an end. The great spring manoeuvres were to take place
on the parade-ground so soon as the King and Queen of Syria arrived at
Lipara.

In Othomar there sprang up a vast admiration for his father. He did not
love him with the fondness, the intimacy, the still almost childish
dependence with which he loved the empress; he had always looked up to
him; as a child he had been afraid of him. Now, after the personal
courage which he had seen the emperor display, the sovereign power which
he had watched him exercise, his majesty rose higher before Othomar's
eyes, as it were the statue of a demi-god. He felt himself a lowly
mortal beside him, when he thought:

"What should _I_ have done, if I had had to act in this case? Should I
have dared to take the prompt decision to dissolve the house of deputies
and should I not have feared an immediate revolution in every corner of
the country? Should I, after the disturbances, have dared to dismiss the
Marquis of Dazzara at once, like a lackey, attached as he was to our
house and descended from our most glorious nobility? Should I have dared
to summon that duke, that swashbuckler, with his cruel face, even before
I had dismissed the marquis, so that the one arrived as the other
departed?"

And he already saw himself hesitating in imagination, not knowing what
would be best, above all not knowing what would be most just; he
pictured himself advised by old Count Myxila, at last determined to
dissolve the deputies, but not dismissing the marquis, not declaring
martial law in Lipara and assembling the troops too late and seeing the
revolution burst out at all points simultaneously, with bomb upon
bom