"I am at your disposal, cousin," said he. "It is enough for me that this
inquiry may give you a little relief. But if the lad is alive, am I to
bring him to you?"
"Oh! no, no, I do not ask that!" And then, gesticulating almost wildly,
she stammered: "I don't know what I want, but I suffer so dreadfully that
I am scarce able to live!"
In point of fact a tempest raged within her, but she really had no
settled plan. One could hardly say that she really thought of that boy as
a possible heir. In spite of her hatred of all conquerors from without,
was it likely that she would accept him as a conqueror, in the face of
her outraged womanly feelings and her bourgeois horror of illegitimacy?
And yet if he were not her son, he was at least her husband's. And
perhaps an idea of saving her empire by placing the works in the hands of
that heir was dimly rising within her, above all her prejudices and her
rancor. But however that might be, her feelings for the time remained
confused, and the only clear thing was her desperate torment at being now
and forever childless, a torment which goaded her on to seek another's
child with the wild idea of making that child in some slight degree her
own.
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