The empress saw in Othomar so very much her own son that, in the intimacy of their morning conversations--for the crown-prince still paid his mother a short visit every morning--she was surprised not to find in him her own dread, but on the contrary all her own resignation, which was the reverse side of it. But since his marriage she had found him altogether changed, no longer, in these short moments of their private intercourse, complaining, hesitating, searching, but speaking calmly of what he must do, filled with an evident harmony that gave a restful assurance to his words, his gestures and even his actions. With this assurance he retained a quiet, dignified modesty: he did not put his views forward at all violently; he continued to possess that receptiveness for the views of others which had always been one of his most prominent and attractive qualities. He was undoubtedly old for his young years: any one who did not know better would have given him more than his twenty-three years, now that he was allowing his crisp beard to grow.... And yet, yet, especially in these troubled days, his old fears would often well up within him and he would remain sitting alone for minutes at a time, staring at a vague point in his room, listening to the murmurs of the future, as he had listened in that haunting night among his forefathers at Castel Vaza. He then felt that, suddenly, as with a garment, all his new resignation in life was slipping from him, falling from his shoulders. But he had learnt so to govern himself that nobody, not his father, not his mother, not even the crown-princess, noticed anything of this mental dizziness, which left him ice-cold in his short periods of solitude, doubting his right, full of strange, soft compassion for his people.... It was, actually, the old illness which thus, periodically, seethed in him again like an evil sap, flowing through his veins, enfeebling his nerves, crushing him internally, as though he would never be cured of it. But he grew accustomed to it, no longer felt despair because of it, even knew, during the few minutes that the malady lasted, that it would pass and afterwards regained that sense of harmony which above all constituted his resignation.