lent to the third or fourth
act, of what might prove a tragedy or a drama, as the author designed.
The personages are "Norbert" and "Constance," a young man and woman; and
the "Queen," a woman of a certain age. Constance is a relation and
protegee of the Queen--as we imagine, a poor one. She is loved by
Norbert; and he has entered the Queen's service, for the opportunity of
wooing and winning her. His diplomatic exertions have been strenuous.
They have secured to his royal mistress the possession of a double
crown. The "Balcony" echoes with the sound of festivities which are
intended to mark the event.

Constance returns Norbert's affection. He thinks the moment come for
pleading his and her cause with their sovereign. But Constance entreats
him to temporize: either to defer the proposal for her hand, or to make
it in so indirect a manner, that the Queen may only see in it a tribute
to herself. He has allowed her to think that he served her for her own
sake; she must not be undeceived too roughly. Her heart has starved
amidst the show of devotion: its hunger must not be roused by the touch
of a living love in which she has no part. A shock of this kind would be
painful to her--dangerous to themselves.

Norbert is an honest man, possessed of all the courage of his love: and
he finds it hard to believe that the straightforward course would not be
the best; but he yields to the dictates of feminine wisdom; and having
consented to play a part, plays it with fatal success. The Queen is a
more unselfish woman than her young cousin suspects. She has guessed
Norbert's love for Constance, and is prepared to sanction it; but her
own nature is still only too capable of responding to the faintest touch
of affection: and at the seeming declaration that that love is her's,
her joy carries all before it. She is married; but as she declares she
will dissolve her marriage, merely formal as it has always been; she
will cast convention to the winds, and become Norbert's wife. She opens
her heart to Constance; tells her how she has yearned for love, and how
she will repay it. Constance knows, as she never knew, what a mystery of
pain and passion has been that outwardly frozen life; and in a sudden
impulse of pity and compunction, she determines that if possible its new
happiness shall be permanent--its delusions converted into truth.

She meets Norbert again; makes him talk of his future; discovers that he
only dreams of it as bound up w