Her Royal Lover: A Novel — page 312: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

304 HER ROYAL LOVER. time, how it was necessary to proceed to manage this tyrannical and despotic character, he succeeded in making her have patience. After several days only the empress sent for the president. The inter- view was short but decisive. The empress said dis- tinctly to Monsieur Haller “that she did not wish to influence him at all, but thatif he should find that there was occasion to annul the marriage, and if the judgment of the court was such, she would pledge her word of honor that the king would elevate him to the nobility for his exceptionable services. I have learned,” said the sovereign, with a gracious smile, “that if this is realized, all the obstacles to a certain thing which you have much at heart will be re- moved.” Haller, almost offended at the beginning of the in- terview, left the empress very solicitous. He hardly dared to say to his wife and son that it was in his power to give them the supreme happiness which would restore them to life. But when he observed the countenance of Madame Haller changed by in- cessant grief; when he saw Conrad’s hand so pale, and so emaciated, that it appeared transparent under the rosy beams of the lamp in the evening, when he was distractedly turning the leaves of some pamphlet, he felt himself almost criminal, having the power to transform the despair of these two beings, who were so dear to him, into a delirium of happiness, he hesitated to speak. Ah! it is this ter- rible interior pincers which rends many skillfully ar- ranged plots, conscience was still alive in him al- — though vacillating. Would he really dare to decide, by an indestructible decree, against the life of a poor woman so terribly outraged and so unjustly ‘punished? _— m Gomichookssco