"What I ask may be more difficult to give. I am going to beg you,--listen!--to renounce what you have so long desired. Be very calm. The Revolution submerged the throne, the altar and whatever our family represented and supported. Providence has replaced us on the throne; the great days of the monarchy have returned; the churches have been re-opened; our country has been reconciled to its monarchs and its God,--the God who has placed the crown upon our uncle's head rather than upon yours. God has perhaps selected you as the victim, innocent tho you be. He has required your sacrifice and he continues to require it. To what do you aspire today? Are you thinking of placing arms in the hands of our father's executioners? Have you come, Charles Louis, to win the applause of hell?" He could not answer for gazing upon her. "Your duty is to retire to peace and quietude. Whatever be your rights, your duty is to stifle your pretensions. I assure you this is true." "And my children, Thérèse? My sons? I have the sons which have been denied to both you and Ferdinand. No one but me can present an heir. My seed has fallen upon blessed ground in being mingled with the people." The Duchess experienced great anger, as she always did at any allusion to her sterility, and she retorted harshly: "The heir whom you present is from a woman of low extraction, the fruit of a union unsanctioned by the Catholic Church. And you dare aspire to the throne? Remember the Corsican! He also sought to improvise a dynasty. All that survives of that farce is the daughter of a real emperor and the son of the adventurer, sheltered by that emperor's throne. If you believed yourself a king, why did you marry a plebeian? Why did you not restrain your passions? And you complain of your fate? As for your heart, you have followed its impulses. I married my cousin because the state required the union--Ferdinand separated from his loved Amy Brown and abandoned his children, one of them a son, in order to marry Caroline. Are you willing to do likewise? I know well you are not. Believe me, believe me, Charles Louis, life is not what we would wish but as God ordains it to be. Your fate has been to live far from the throne--Resign yourself to the decree. Do not violate the most holy PRINCIPLE, the PRINCIPLE for which our father died. He adjures you from the tomb to accept your lot." Her eloquence subjugated him, for she spoke from her heart's conviction. "God was God, yet he lived and died a man," she continued. "Live then and die a man, my brother. Will you?--a man of the people." In a transport of abnegation, he kissed her cheeks and said: "I will." In confirmation of his promise, he drew the casket of documents from his breast and held them toward her.