?" he cried. "Your will? You acknowledge that I am nothing of
a prince except by birth? You acknowledge that Berengar does possess
your capacity for ruling and you will not, you _will_ not have me
abdicate? And you think that I shall fall in with that will?..."

He uttered a hoarse laugh:

"No, papa, I shall pay no heed to that will. You can carry through your
will in everything, but not in this. Though you called out your whole
army, you could not prevail against me here. There is a limit to the
power of human will, papa, and nothing, nothing, nothing can prevent me
from considering myself unfit to reign and from _refusing_ to wear a
crown!"

The emperor seized Othomar's wrists; his hot breath hissed in Othomar's
face:

"You damned cub!" he snarled between his large, white teeth. "You
wretched nincompoop! You're right: there's nothing of the emperor in
you; there never will be. If I didn't know better, I'd say you were the
son of a footman. You're right, you're incompetent. You're nothing: our
crown doesn't fit you. And yet, though I had to lock you up in a prison,
so that no one might hear of your baseness, you shall _not_ abdicate
your rights. My will extends farther than you can see. Do you hear? You
shan't do it, you shan't resign, though from this moment onwards I have
to hide you, as a disgrace, from the world. Your slack brain can't
understand that, can it? You can't understand that I'm fonder of
Berengar than of a poltroon like you and that nevertheless I won't have
him as my successor in your stead? Then I shall have to tell you. I
won't have it, so as not to let the world see the degeneration of our
race. I will not have the world know how pitiably we have deteriorated
in you; and I would rather ... I would rather murder you than allow you
to abdicate!"

Fiercely Oscar took the prince by his shoulders, pushed him backwards on
a couch, on which Othomar sank in a huddled attitude, while his father
continued to hold him like a prey in the grip of his strong hands:

"But I tell you," continued the emperor, "I tell you, you are _not_ the
son of a footman, you are my son; and I shall not murder you, because I
am your father. I will only say this to you, Othomar: you might have
spared me this. I believe you have a high opinion of your own delicacy
of feeling, but you have not the very least feeling. You do not even
feel that you have been contemplating a villainy, the villainy of a
proletarian, a slave, a par