Volume I Part 48 (1/2)
Amalaswintha was startled, and stopped again in her restless walk.
”You are very bold!” she said.
”I am your daughter----”
”You speak of love so familiarly--you seem to know it at twenty better than I at fifty. You love!” she cried suddenly, ”and thence comes this obstinacy!”
Mataswintha blushed and was silent.
”Speak,” cried her angry mother; ”confess it or deny it.”
Mataswintha cast down her eyes and still kept silence. She had never looked more beautiful.
”Will you deny the truth? Are you afraid, you, a daughter of the Amelungs?”
The girl proudly raised her eyes.
”I am not afraid and I do not deny the truth. Yes, I love.”
”And whom, unhappy girl?”
”Not even a G.o.d could force me to tell that!”
She looked so decided that Amalaswintha did not attempt to learn more.
”Well,” she said, ”my daughter has no common nature. So I demand of you what is uncommon: to sacrifice all to the highest.”
”Mother, I cherish a n.o.ble dream in my heart. To me it is the highest.
To it I will sacrifice all.”
”Mataswintha,” said the Queen, ”how unqueenly! See, G.o.d has blessed you above thousands with beauty of body and mind. You are born to be a queen.”
”I will be a queen of love. All praise my beauty. I have proposed to myself, loving and beloved, happy and bestowing happiness, to be a true woman!”
”A woman? is that all your ambition?”
”It is. Oh, would it had been yours!”
”And the realm is nothing to you, the grandchild of Theodoric? Your nation, the Goths, are they of no account?”
”No, mother,” said Mataswintha quietly; ”it grieves me, it almost makes me ashamed, but I cannot pretend what I do not feel. The word 'Goth'
arouses no sentiment in me. Perhaps it is not my fault; you have always despised these Goths and valued these 'barbarians' lightly; that was my first impression; it is enduring. And I hate this crown, this kingdom of the Goths; it has taken the place of my father, of my brother, and of myself in your heart! The Gothic crown has never been anything to me but a hated and inimical power.”
”Oh, my child, woe to me if I am guilty of this! If you will not do it for the sake of our kingdom, oh, do it for my sake! I am lost without these Wolfungs. Do it for the sake of my love!” And she took her daughter's hand.
Mataswintha drew back with a bitter smile:
”Mother, do not blaspheme that holy name! Your love? You have never loved me. Nor my brother, nor my father.”
”My child! What should I have loved if not you?”