ssing summer which now and
then lovingly steal in between the chill breaths of September. The
velvet hush of the mid-day hour had fallen.

There was an endless horizon of turquoise blue, a zenith pellucid as
glass. The trees stood motionless; not a shadow stirred, save that which
was cast by the tremulous wings of a black and purple butterfly, which,
near to his Majesty, fell, rose and sank again. From a drove of wild
bees, swimming hither and thither in quest of the final sweets of the
year, came a low murmurous hum, such as a man sometimes fancies he hears
while standing alone in the vast auditorium of a cathedral.

The king, from where he sat, could see the ivy-clad towers of the
archbishop's palace, where, in and about the narrow windows, gray and
white doves fluttered and plumed themselves. The garden sloped gently
downward till it merged into a beautiful lake called the Werter See,
which, stretching out several miles to the west, in the heart of the
thick-wooded hills, trembled like a thin sheet of silver.

Toward the south, far away, lay the dim, uneven blue line of the Thalian
Alps, which separated the kingdom that was from the duchy that is, and
the duke from his desires. More than once the king leveled his gaze
in that direction, as if to fathom what lay behind those lordly rugged
hills.

There was in the air the delicate odor of the deciduous leaves which,
every little while, the king inhaled, his eyes half-closed and his
nostrils distended. Save for these brief moments, however, there rested
on his countenance an expression of disenchantment which came of
the knowledge of a part ill-played, an expression which described a
consciousness of his unfitness and inutility, of lethargy and weariness
and distaste.

To be weary is the lot of kings, it is a part of their royal
prerogative; but it is only a great king who can be weary gracefully.
And Leopold was not a great king; indeed, he was many inches short of
the ideal; but he was philosophical, and by the process of reason he
escaped the pitfalls which lurk in the path of peevishness.

To know the smallness of the human atom, the limit of desire, the
existence of other lives as precious as their own, is not the philosophy
which makes great kings. Philosophy engenders pity; and one who
possesses that can not ride roughshod over men, and that is the business
of kings.

As for Leopold, he would rather have wandered the byways of Kant than
studied royal eti