ase I date from this time a fresh development
of myself. I was growing into my kingship, beginning to realize the
conception of it, and to fill up that conception in my own mind. This
moment was of importance to me; for it marked the beginning of a period
during which this idea of my position was very dominant and coloured
all I did or thought. I did not change my opinion as to the discomfort
of the post; but its importance, its sacredness, and its paramount
claims grew larger and larger in my eyes. It seems curious, but had
Baron Fritz been a different sort of lover, I think that I should have
been in some respects a different sort of a king. It needs a constant
intellectual effort to believe that there is anything except accident in
the course of the world.

Hammerfeldt's persistent pressure drove the love-lorn Baron, still
undrowned (had the watchers been too vigilant?), on a long foreign tour,
and in three months the Princess and Victoria returned. I saw at once
that the new relations were permanently established between them; my
mother displayed an almost ostentatious abdication of authority; her
whole air declared that since Victoria chose to walk alone, alone in
good truth she should walk. It was the attitude of a proud and
domineering nature that answers any objection to its sway by a wholesale
disclaimer at once of power and responsibility. Victoria accepted her
mother's resolution, but rather with resentment than gratitude. They had
managed the affair badly; my mother had lost influence without gaining
affection; my sister had forfeited guidance but not achieved a true
liberty. She was hardly more her own mistress than before; Hammerfeldt,
screened behind me, now trammelled her, and she had a statesman to deal
with instead of a mother. Only once she spoke to me concerning the Baron
and his affair; the three months had wrought some change here also.

"I was very silly," she said impatiently. "I know that well enough."

"Then why don't you make it up with mother?" I ventured to suggest.

"Mother behaved odiously," she declared. "I can never forgive her the
way she treated me."

The grievance then had shifted its ground; not what the Princess had
done, but the manner in which she had done it was now the head and front
of her offence. It needed little acquaintance with the world to
recognise that matters were not improved by this change; one may come to
recognise that common sense was with the enemy; vanity at