SCENE YII PART SECOND
EMPRESS-MOTHER
$./;* your regrets are sentimental ever. That hell be writ no son-in-law of mine Is no regret to me ! But an affront There is, no less, in his evasion on't, 'Wherein the bourgeois quality of him Veraciously peeps out. I would be sworn He set his minions parleying with the twain— Yourself and Francis—simultaneously, Else no betrothal could have speeded so!
ALEXANDER Despite the hazard of offence to one ?
EMPRESS-MOTHER More than the hazard ; the necessity.
ALEXANDER There's no offence to me.
E MPRESS- M OTHER
There should be, then. I am a Romanoff by marriage merely, Bu£ I do feel a rare belittlement And loud laconic brow-beating herein!
ALEXANDER
No, mother, no! I am the Tsar—not you,
And I am only piqued in moderateness.
Marriage with France was near my heart—I own it—
What men ? It has been otherwise ordained.
[A silencer 355