f marriage. You gave a bad and
dangerous example to your subjects, and it has done its work. Look
around in your land, sire. Everywhere you will see unhappy women who
have been deserted by their husbands, and miserable men who have been
dishonored by their faithless wives. Look at your own family. Our sister
of Baireuth died of grief, and of the humiliation she endured from the
mistress of her husband. Our brother, Augustus William, died solitary
and alone. He withdrew in his grief to Oranienburg, and his wife
remained in Berlin. She was not with him when he died; strangers
received his last breath--strangers closed his eyes. Our sister of
Anspach quarrelled with her husband, until finally she submitted, and
made a friend of his mistress. And I, sire, I also stand before you with
the brand of shame upon my brow. I also have been betrayed and deceived,
and all this is your work. If the king mocks at the sacred duties of
marriage, how can he expect that his family and subjects should respect
them? It is the fashion in your land for husbands and wives to deceive
one another, and it is you who have set this fashion."

"I have allowed you to finish, Henry," said the king, when the prince
was at length silent. "I have allowed you to finish, but I have not
heard your angry and unjust reproaches, I have only heard that my
brother is unhappy, and it is, I know, natural for the unhappy to seek
the source of their sorrows in others and not in themselves. I forgive
all that you have said against me; but if you hold me responsible for
the miserable consequences of the war, which kept the men at a distance
for years and loosened family ties, that shows plainly that your
judgment is unreliable, and that you cannot discriminate with justice. I
did not commence this war heedlessly; I undertook it as a heavy burden.
It has made an old man of me; it has eaten up my life before my time.
I see all the evil results, and I consider it my sacred duty to bind up
the wounds which it has inflicted on my country. I work for this
object day and night; I give all of my energies to this effort; I have
sacrificed to it all my personal inclinations. But I must be contented
to bind up the wounds. I cannot make want disappear; I cannot
immediately change sorrow into gladness."

"Ah, sire, you seek to avoid the subject, and to speak of the general
unhappiness instead of my special grief. I call you to account, because
you forced me to take a wife that I