Temporal Power | Page 5

bound, reported the conversation to his pupil's father; with the additional observation that he feared, he very humbly and respectfully feared, that the developing mind of the prince appeared undesirably disposed towards discursive philosophies, which were wholly unnecessary for the position he was destined to occupy. Whereupon the King took his son to task on the subject with a mingling of kindness and humour.
"Do not turn philosopher!" he said--"For philosophy will not so much content you with life, as with death! Philosophy will chill your best impulses and most generous enthusiasms,--it will make you over-cautious and doubtful of your friends,--it will cause you to be indifferent to women in the plural, but it will hand you over, a weak and helpless victim to the one woman,--when she comes,--as she is bound to come. There is no one so hopelessly insane as a philosopher in love! Love women, but not a woman!"
"In so doing I should follow the wisest of examples,--yours, Sir!" replied the prince with a familiarity more tender than audacious, for his father was a man of fine presence and fascinating manner, and knew well the extent of his power to charm and subjugate the fairer sex,-- "But I have a fancy that love,--if it exists anywhere outside the dreams of the poets,--is unknown to kings."
The monarch bent his brows frowningly, and his eyes were full of a deep and bitter melancholy.
"You mistake!" he said slowly--"Love,--and by that name I mean a wholly different thing from Passion,--comes to kings as to commoners,--but whereas the commoner may win it if he can, the king must reject it. But it comes,--and leaves a blank in the proudest life when it goes!"
He turned away abruptly, and the conversation was not again resumed. But when he died, those who prepared his body for burial, found a gold chain round his neck, holding the small medallion portrait of a woman, and a curl of soft fair hair. Needless to say the portrait was not that of the late Queen-Consort, who had died some years before her Royal spouse, nor was the hair hers,--but when they brought the relic to the new King, he laid it back with his own hands on his father's lifeless breast, and let it go into the grave with him. For, being no longer the crowned Servant of the State, he had the right as a mere dead man, to the possession of his love-secret.
So at least thought his son and successor, who at times was given to wondering whether if, like his father, he had such a secret he would be able to keep it as closely and as well. He thought not. It would be scarcely worth while. It can only be the greatest love that is always silent,--and in the greatest,--that is, the ideal and self-renouncing love,--he did not believe; though in his own life's experience he had been given a proof that such love is possible to women, if not to men. When he was about twenty, he had loved, or had imagined he loved, a girl,--a pretty creature, who did not know him as a prince at all, but simply as a college student. He used to walk with her hand in hand through the fields by the river, and gather wild flowers for her to wear in her little white bodice. She had shy soft eyes, and a timid, yet trusting look, full of tenderness and pathos. Moved by a romantic sense of honour and chivalry, he promised to marry her, and thereupon wrote an impulsive letter to his father informing him of his intention. Of course he was summoned home from college at once,--he was reminded of his high destiny--of the Throne that would be his if he lived to occupy it,--of the great and serious responsibilities awaiting him,-- and of how impossible it was that the Heir-Apparent to the Crown should marry a commoner.
"Why not?" he cried passionately--"If she be good and true she is as fit to be a queen as any woman royally born! She is a queen already in her own right!"
But while he was being argued with and controlled by all the authorities concerned in king's business, his little sweetheart herself put an end to the matter. Her parents told her all unpreparedly, and with no doubt unnecessary harshness, the real position of the college lad with whom she had wandered in the fields so confidingly; and in the bewilderment of her poor little broken heart and puzzled brain, she gave herself to the river by whose flowering banks she had sworn her maiden vows,--though she knew it not,--to her future King; and so, drowning her life and love together, made a piteous exit from all difficulty. Before she went forth to die, she wrote a farewell to