The Gothlandic princes and their suite returned with the Emperor Oscar to the capital, where, at her sister's pressing request, Queen Olga had also come, with Princess Wanda. And, in the mourning stillness of the Imperial, the family drew together in a narrow circle of intimacy. After her first tears, the Empress Elizabeth had lost her unnatural calm and constantly gave way to violent fits of sorrow, which Queen Olga or Othomar had difficulty in allaying. The emperor was inconsolable, indulging his grief with childish vehemence. Nobody had ever seen him like that before, nobody recognized him. The fact that he had lost his favourite child aroused his soul to rebellion against God. In addition to this, he had very much taken to heart his last conversation with Othomar, in which the prince had spoken to him of abdicating. The emperor had not returned to the subject, but it was never out of his thoughts. He feared that he would have to discuss it with Othomar again. He was furious when he felt how powerless he was to prevent the crown-prince from taking this desperate resolution. And he pictured the legal results if the prince maintained his purpose: the Archduchess of Carinthia empress, the archduke prince-consort and the house of Czyrkiski no longer reigning in the male line on the throne of Liparia. The possibility of this contingency, taken in conjunction with his sorrow at Berengar's death, made the Emperor Oscar suffer with that very special suffering of a monarch in whose veins still flows all the hereditary attachment to the greatness of his ancestors and who hopes to see this endure for all time. And he was also inconsolable for the loss of the child whom he loved best, more profoundly but also more silently, in greater secrecy, since he did not speak of it; and this probably made him feel more bitterly the thought of the future which he saw imaged before him. He had not even mentioned it to the empress, because of a certain superstitious dread. And with this mental sorrow--that his robust soul, which had always retained a touch of childishness, was allowing itself to feel weak, as though it were the soul of any other mortal instead of his, a monarch's--there was mingled his substantial annoyance about the army bill. There would be three hundred millions needed: one hundred millions had already been voted for the increase of the infantry; the other two hundred, for the artillery, Count Marcella, the minister for war, had not yet succeeded in obtaining. The majority of the army committee was against this colossal arming of the frontier-forts; the minister already expected a violent opposition in the house of deputies and was fully prepared for his fall. None of the three--Oscar, Myxila or Marcella--was willing to make the least compromise. And Oscar moreover was prepared to support his minister to the point of impossibility.