Page:Zawis and Kunigunde (1895).djvu/237

 Solomon declared that the temper of courts and of hierarchies for nearly a century threatened a wide separation between rulers and people.

“I perceive,” he said, “an arbitrary spirit of alleged divine assumption, on one side, and a restiveness and tendency to self-assertion on the other, that portend severe contests in the near future. The groans and sufferings of the one class, and the robber temper of the other, menace us with violent social convulsions.”

“Only a few days ago,” added Ladislaus,“I received by courier a message from my sister. You probably know that a dispensation released her from religious vows. She describes her joy as being for this reason, exuberant! ‘That motherhood should come to me,’ she says, ‘after I had relinquished all prospect of marriage; and that I should experience such lively hopes of family honor, is a cause of deep gratification. My baby is well and strong; but I do not know whom he resembles most. Sometimes I think when I look into my good husband’s face that my boy resembles him. They tell me he is most like me; and Zawis says he is my very image; but that is so like him. Indeed we are so happy I do not know what could add to it. And we are to have the king and queen at the baptism; and I have worked so hard to finish the lace veil for her.

“‘She will look so well in it, think. If it were not really my own work, and all I could wish in material and design, I would not think of presenting it. We