Her Royal Lover: A Novel — page 337: what you’re looking at

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

HER ROYAL LOVER. 329 name of “judges.” In many cases, politics, the de- sire of attaining to power, to crush a rival, are the only motives of those beings to whom society con- fides the fate of so many afflicted people who hope in them, and whom they suffer to be crushed with impunity, with cynical indifference! And then, what-would not be done to attract the good graces of that old fury, the Empress of Hindo- stan. The latter in operating secretly, acts only the more surely; she is to be feared, very much to be feared, this indefatigable instigator to whom all were obedient, without love, but with invincible terror. Was not such an enemy enough, and was more necessary to break this feeble reed, so often agitated by the storm of passions and of hate? So many interior combats, conflicting thoughts, of hopes followed by discouragements, were wasting and undermining poor Najeska Ivanowna. En- dowed if we may so express it, with second sight, she divined the horrible end from which nothing | could save her, and then, like a lamb under the ax ready to strike, she let painfully fall her head emaci- ated by suffering, but rendered yet more beautiful by resignation. Her heart, swollen with bitter sorrows, broken by so many unjust blows, found at last a little calm in the abundant tears which she shed in solitude, in abandonment. Comichbooks