iah, a wretch. You have not felt even for an
instant the pain you would cause me by such an infamy. You saw that I
was fonder of your brother; you thought that I should approve of your
cowardly proposal. Not for a moment did the thought occur to you that,
with that cowardice of yours, you would give _me_ the greatest pain that
I could ever experience!..."

Othomar, utterly crushed, had fallen back upon the couch. He was no
longer able to distinguish what was just and what was true; he no longer
knew himself at that minute; his father's words lashed his soul like
whips. And he felt no strength within him to resist them: the insulting
reproaches kept him down, as though he had been thrashed. Infamy and
disgrace, insanity and degeneration: he collapsed beneath them; he
gulped down the mud of them, till he felt like suffocating. And that he
did not suffocate and continued to breathe, continued to live, that the
light was bright around him, that things remained unchanged, that the
outside world knew nothing: all this was despair to him. For a moment he
thought of his mother. But he wished for darkness, for death, to hide
himself, himself and his shame, his degeneration, the leprosy of his
pariah-temperament.... It flashed through him in the second after that
last lash of reproach, flashed across his despondent soul. He knew that
Oscar always kept a loaded revolver in an open pigeon-hole of his
writing-table. His brain grew tense in the effort of thinking how to
reach it. He rose, approached the pigeon-hole; suddenly he sprang
towards it, stretched out his hand and seized the pistol....

Did Oscar believe that his son had been driven mad by his last words and
now wanted his father's life? Did he perceive this ecstasy of suicide in
his offspring, was his quivering brain penetrated by the horrible
thought that self-destruction would be the pariah's last refuge? Be this
as it might, he rushed at Othomar. But the prince lightly leapt out of
his reach, pointed the revolver, with wild eyes, with distorted
features, in senseless despair, upon himself, upon his own forehead, on
which the veins swelled blue....

"Othomar!" roared the emperor.

At this moment hurried footsteps were heard outside, confused words
sounded in the anteroom and the Marquis of Xardi, the emperor's
aide-de-camp, alarmed and flurried, threw the door wide open....

"Sir!" he exclaimed. "The empress asks if your majesty will come to
Prince Berengar this inst