“Madame—”

“It would hurt all of us.” She took the royal father’s hand, gazing up into the face that adorned so many coins and portraits. “I know you want to do right by our child, but the honorable thing in this case is not the kind thing, not to our child, or to me, or to yourself. Tell him, Caesar.”

Madame looked to the Emperor, who drew close on her other side. Together, reader, we have seen Cornel MASON’s black-sleeved left hand quake many times with rage, sometimes with prudent fear, his instincts scenting something rotten on the edges of his Empire, but his steady right hand, that I find hard to imagine trembling. They say it happened when he entered the Sanctum Sanctorum to take the MASONIC Oath of Office, which even the successor may not read until the moment he must take it. They say it happened when Apollo had Mushi let him touch a Mars ant. They say it happened as he set his palm against Madame’s bare skin and felt the Baby kick.

Caesar’s words were firm as a portcullus slamming down: “I will adopt our child as Porphyrogene.”

All turned. All gasped.

“Caesar?” The mask of makeup on Madame’s portrait face was too thick to show whether she blushed.

As the steel cage of a splint is gentle to the millimeter toward the limb it heals yet also hard as armor, so the Emperor’s hand stayed stiff but gentle on her belly. “For a royal prince to be raised as an imperial prince instead is surely neither deprivation nor dishonor.”

Spain’s tears flowed freely now. “You would do this for me?”

“For themself,” Director Andō cut in, flushing with passion. “For control.”

“No, the opposite: for all of us.” Not harshness but warmth rose in Caesar’s eyes, in his face, a human warmth which caught Andō off guard. “This is our child.” He looked to Andō first, then Spain, Faust, the Duke, the staring Censor, “I’m sure you feel it too, all of our child, the child of our… connections, to each other and Madame, as much as if this were a real bash’.” Even brooding Andō could not resist the word, the smile it coaxed. “We can’t be a real bash’,” Caesar added quickly, “but this child should be raised among us, all of us, or as close to among us as we can make possible. As Porphyrogene the child will grow up at the center of world politics, and the public will think it perfectly natural if my peers and collagues come to know them, and spend time with them. That way you will all be able to help raise them, not only here, but out in the public world, as ba’pas should.”

Warm feelings rose in all their faces, longing, friendship, many different things named love, even the primordial tenderness called parenthood, except in Ganymede de la Trémoïlle.

“Do you propose to raise the Prince away from here, Caesar? In Alexandria? Not at Madame’s?” Here the Duke-Consul’s impossibly blue eyes show his reflexive fear, Madame’s creation remembering how hard he fought to break from her, to seize even the tiny hint of freedom he now enjoyed having his own houshold at La Tremouille. A childhood in Alexandria could spare this child that fight, but, on the other hand, to be raised outside this house in Paris is to be raised a sexless, cultureless barbarian; can the noble Duke wish that upon a babe who shares the blood of Charlemagne?