He had communicated to this confidant the full details of his
interview with the emperor, and concluded his report by saying, with
a deep sigh, "The emperor will be silent until the favorable moment
has passed!"

Count Nugent gazed with a look of heart-felt sympathy into the
archduke's mournful face; he saw the tears filling John's large blue
eyes; he saw that he firmly compressed his lips as if to stifle a
cry of pain or rage, and that he clinched his hands in the agony of
his despair. Animated by tender compassion, the general approached
the archduke, who had sunk into a chair, and laid his hand gently on
his shoulder. "Courage, courage!" he whispered; "nothing is lost as
yet, and your imperial highness--"

"Ah, why do you address me with `imperial highness'?" cried the
archduke, almost indignantly. "Do you not see, then, that this is a
miserable title by which Fate seems to mock me, and which it
thunders constantly, and, as it were, sneeringly into my ears, in
order to remind me again and again of my deplorable powerlessness?
There is nothing 'imperial' about me but the yoke under which I am
groaning; and my `highness' is to be compared only with the crumbs
of Lazarus which fell from the rich man's table. And yet there are
persons, Nugent, who envy me these crumbs--men who think it a
brilliant and glorious lot to be an 'imperial highness,' the brother
of a sovereign emperor! Ah, they do not know that this title means
only that I am doomed to everlasting dependence and silence, and
that the emperor's valet de chambre and his private secretary are
more influential men than the Archduke John, who cannot do anything
but submit, be silent, and look on in idleness."