EUDOXIE
"ARCHDUCHESS OF AUSTRIA,
"SIGISMUNDINGEN.

"ST. LADISLAS,
"ALTARA,
"--_May_, 18--.

"MY DEAR MOTHER,

"I cannot tell you how your letter pained me. For God's sake, do not
excite yourself so and say such terrible things. We too regretted
intensely that you could not be present at our coronation and that your
rheumatic fever obliged you to remain at Sigismundingen; but why need
you, dear mother, look upon that fever as a punishment from God? And why
need you look upon it as a punishment from God that you did not see your
fondest illusion fulfilled and were not able to be present in our old
cathedral when Othomar, after being crowned by the primate, with his own
hands crowned me Empress of Liparia? You were not there, but yet it came
about: your illusion is truth, after all. And I tell you this without
the least, oh, believe me, without the _least_ bitterness!... A
punishment for forcing me, against my will? You must be ill indeed, ill
in body and mind, poor mother, to be able to write like that: it makes
me smile a little, I no longer recognize you. And let my smile bear
witness that I am not unhappy: oh, far from it! Our happiness is hardly
ever what we ourselves intend it to be and what we regret that it is
not....

"If you were to see me, you would see that I am not unhappy. It is May,
the sun is shining, the oriel-windows are open. In the distance, when I
look out, I can see the Zanthos winding away in a broad, gleaming
expanse of water. Close by my writing-table stands your beautiful big
silver cradle; and through the closed lace curtains I can see my little
Duke of Xara slumbering.... I don't know how to write all this to you, I
have no command of words in which to express it fully to you; but what I
feel, with this wide river landscape before me and this precious little
child by my side: oh, mamma, it is not unhappiness! It is a feeling
which hides a great deal of melancholy, but which hides nothing more
sombre than that. And really why should it, in spite of that melancholy,
not be even happiness? I am young, I am empress and I see life before
me! Round about me, I see my country, I see my people: I want it to
become the people of my heart, of my soul, entirely. I don't yet know
how, but I want to live for this people, I want to live together with