'Bela wishes it!' he would say, with an impatient frown, whenever his desire was combated or crossed: he had already the full conviction that to be Bela was to have full right to rule the world, including in it his brother Gela, who was of a serious, mild, and yielding disposition, and gave up to him in all things. As compensating qualities he was very affectionate and sensitive, and easily moved to self-reproach.
With a step Sabran reached him. 'You dare to disobey your mother?' he said, sternly. 'Ask her forgiveness at once. Do you hear?'
Bela, who had never heard his father speak in such a tone, was very frightened, and lost all his colour; but he was resolute, and had been four years old on Ascension Day. He remained silent and obstinate.
Sabran put his hand heavily on the child's shoulder.
'Do you hear me, sir? Ask her pardon this moment.'
Bela was now fairly stunned into obedience.
'Bela is sorry,' he murmured. 'Bela begs pardon.'
'You alarmed him rather too much. He is so very young,' she said to his father, when the child, forgiven and consoled, had trotted off to his nurse, who came for him.
'He shall obey you, and find his law in your voice, or I will alarm him more,' he said, with some harshness. 'If I thought he would ever give you a moment's sorrow I should hate him!'
It was not the first time that Sabran had seen his own more evil qualities look at him from the beautiful little face of his elder son, and at each of those times a sort of remorse came upon him. 'I was unworthy to beget _her_ children,' he thought, with the self-reproach that seldom left him, even amidst the deep tranquility of his satisfied passions, and his perfect peace of life. Who could tell what trials, what pains, what shame even, might not fall on her in the years to come, with the errors that her offspring would have in them from his blood?
'It is foolish,' she murmured, 'he is but a baby; yet it hurts one to see the human sin, the human wrath, look out from the infant eyes. It hurts one to remember, to realise, that one's own angel, one's own little flower, has the human curse born with it. I express myself ill; do you know what I mean? No, you do not, dear; you are a man. He is your son, and because he will be handsome and brave you will be proud of him; but he is not a young angel, not a blossom from Eden to you.'