ylight. She is most gracious
towards me, but we feel it instinctively--there is something in her and
in me that does not harmonise....

"Here all of them think me boundlessly naive, because I have the courage
to think for myself....

"The king loves reserve, but also gay freeness. The queen is too
serious--eternal organ sound; but you cannot dance to an organ, and we
are young and love to dance.

"A peasant woman from the mountains is nurse to the crown prince. I was
with her at the king's request. I stood by the cot when the king
arrived. He said to me gently: 'It is true, an angel stands by the
child's cradle.' He laid his hand upon mine, which rested on the rail of
the cot. The king went. And just imagine what occurred. The nurse, a
fresh, merry person with blue eyes, buxom and massive, a perfect peasant
beauty, to whom I showed friendliness, so as to cheer her up and save
her from feeling homesick, the nurse tells me in bald words: 'You are an
adulteress! You have exchanged loving glances with the king!'

"Emmy! How you were right in telling me that I idealise the people, and
that they are as corrupt as the great world, and, moreover, without the
curb of culture.

"No! she is a good, intelligent woman. She begged my pardon for her
impertinence; I remain friendly towards her. Yes, I will."

Irma's devotion to her king had something of hero-worship. And the king,
who loved his wife sincerely, but was, and wanted to be, of a heroic
nature, and who was averse to all that savoured of self-torment and
sentimentality, was attracted by Countess Irma's intellectual freedom
and _esprit_. He felt in her a kindred spirit. Her company was
stimulating; it could not affect the even tenour of his conjugal love.
But the queen, in her sentimental exultation, sought ever for new
"documents" to demonstrate the depth of her affection. And now she
wanted to give the supreme proof by renouncing her Lutheran faith to
enter into a yet closer union with her Catholic husband. To the king
this sacrifice seemed not only sentimentally weak, but politically
unwise. He received the confidence coldly, and begged her to reconsider
the matter. He sent Dr. Gunther, who, in spite of his democratic
tendencies, was held in high esteem by the king, and had great influence
over the queen, to exercise his persuasive powers--with no result.

Where wisdom and experience had failed, the voice of Nature, speaking
out of Walpurga's childish chatter, succ