Othomar. Oh, I grant you, how I am to do that I don't yet know, but I
shall find a way, together with him! And, having a husband and a child
and a people, an emperor, a crown-prince and an empire, have I then no
aim in life? And, having an aim in life--and such a tremendous
aim!--have I not then also happiness? Is happiness anything other than
to have found a lofty, a noble aim in life?

"I am so anxious to convince you. And, if you saw me here, at our quiet
St. Ladislas, now that all the agitation of the coronation-festivities
is past, you would believe me. Othomar loves St. Ladislas and proposes
to come here every year for a month in the spring. It is considered a
good omen that my child was born here, for you know the feeling of the
Liparians, their wish to see the crown-prince of their country born at
St. Ladislas, under the immediate protection of the patron saint.

"Othomar, however, is not here at the moment: he has gone for a few days
to Lipara--of course, you know this from the papers--and writes to me
twice a day. I asked him to do this so that I might be fully informed as
to his state of mind. The tragedy of his father's death, the Emperor
Oscar's two days' death-agony affected Othomar so violently, so
violently: my God, how can I find words to describe that terror to you!
How can I still live in hope, after all that I have already suffered in
my short life and seen around me in the way of terror! And yet, yet it
is like that, for youth is so strong and I, I am strong, I _must_ be
strong....

"I admired my young emperor, in those terrible days, for his outward
calm, through which the storm-flood of all his emotions never burst
loose before the eyes of the world. Directly after the funeral, the
ceremony of signing the five sacred deeds; the immediate agitation of
the accumulated affairs of state.... A month later, the new elections,
the constitutional majority in the house of deputies, the resignation of
the ministry.... All this you will have seen in the papers.... After
that, the birth of our son and then our coronation, at the moment when
Liparia seemed shaken to its foundations! And now Othomar is at Lipara,
because of the new constitutional ministry.... Then Count Myxila, who
does not agree with Othomar's modern ideas and who has even ventured to
reproach him with some vehemence for abandoning all his father's views
upon government so shortly after his violent death and who is now
tendering his resigna