Empress monologue (Act 1) — The Daughter of Heaven

My son! Oh, speak not that name. Do not, to influence me, do not try to touch upon that string, that alone I forbid you touch. At the very moment when you tore him from me, I had an intuition that I should never see him again, never again gaze upon his dear little face, his beautiful eyes----I have courage to listen to all except when you speak to me of him,----for then, do you not see, I become again a mother, nothing but a mother, like other women, and I have no longer, no longer the strength.-[_She turns her head and begins to sob._] Oh, not to belong to one's self, not even to be allowed to lay down on the roadside the burden of one's life!----To be the impersonal idol of a whole people, to be dealt with in accordance with their will! To be a wretched fetish, whom all watch as carefully as the tablets of their ancestors on the family altar!----