"Those are idle words," answered Tetrik with icy coolness. "Your proofs, where are they! I laugh at your impotent threats." "The proofs!" cried Victoria. "They are embodied in your sacrilegious propositions. You conceived the project of being the hereditary emperor of Gaul long before Victorin's death; your proposition of having my grandson acclaimed the heir of his father's office was a lure meant at once to lead me off the scent of your designs and to furnish the first step of the ladder that you meant to climb." "Victoria, anger is blinding you! What a bungler would I have been--if, indeed, the ambitious object that I pursued was a hereditary throne for myself--to advise you to vest the power in your own stock--" "Aye! For one thing, the principle would have been accepted by the army. For another, once hereditary power was established for the future, you would have rid yourself of my son and grandson, in the manner that you did--by assassination. It is all now clear before me. That cursed Bohemian girl was your instrument; she was sent to Mayence in order to seduce my son, in order to drive him with her refusals to the infamous act that the creature demanded as the price of her favors. The crime once committed, my son would either be killed by Schanvoch, who was hastily called back to Mayence that very night, or he would be slain by the army, which received timely notice and was lashed to fury by your emissaries--" "Proofs--proofs--Victoria! Proofs!" "I have none, yet I state the facts! You managed to have my grandson killed the same night--torn from my arms. My stock is extinguished. Your first step towards empire was marked in blood. You thereupon declined power, and proposed the elevation of Marion. Oh! I admit it! Before that prodigy of infernal cunning, my suspicions, which were for a moment aroused, melted away. Two months after his acclamation as Chief of Gaul, Marion fell under the sword of an execrable assassin, your instrument again--" "Proofs!" broke in Tetrik impassibly. "Furnish the proofs!"