ven in a man. But for that very reason it is not inconsistent with
his heroic character for him to exclaim "Oh, friend! Then help me! Save
me! I am lost!" For a man shows himself as such when he gives up for
lost a possession which is lost, not when he, like a madman, renounces
everything for the sake of making fine phrases: and the Prince only does
his duty when he tries in whatever way he can, to rescue his life from
the despotic will of an individual. In the fifth scene, where he
implores the Electress to intercede for him, he says:

"You would not speak thus, mother mine, if death
Had ever terribly encompassed you
As it doth me. With potencies of heaven,
You and my lady, these who serve you, all
The world that rings me round, seem blest to save
The very stable-boy, the meanest, least,
That tends your horses, pleading I could hang
About his neck crying: Oh, save me, thou!"

Even that is, in my opinion, fine and human, for it is the first
ebullition of emotion; and when is the feeling of painful loss ever
separated from the lively desire to preserve the endangered possession?
I do not make this statement because I believe I am saying something
new, but because I think it is something old which has not been
sufficiently taken to heart. For the rest, this fifth scene is very
beautiful and produces a deep effect. Who does not feel annihilated
with the Prince when he exclaims:

"Since I beheld my grave, life, life, I want,
And do not ask if it be kept with honor."

And farther on,

"And tell him this, forget it not, that I
Desire Nathalie no more, for her
All tenderness within my heart is quenched."

And how wonderful, how splendid does Nathalie appear in her calm
nobility! How absolutely true to nature it is that her strength first
begins gently and noiselessly to unfold its wings when the man, whom she
had looked upon as her ideal, from whom she had expected all things, has
succumbed. And how genuinely womanly are the words with which she
attempts to raise him up once more:

"Return, young hero, to your prison walls,
And, on your passage, imperturbably
Regard once more the grave they dug for you.
It is not gloomier, nor more wide at all
Than those the battle showed a thousand times!"

But poetic beauty is like the fragrance of flowers--it cannot be
described, but only perceived.

Nathalie's character is rounded off in the first scene of the fourth act
when she begs the