ion--are you rich?"

"No," answered Moritz, proudly raising his head; "no, I am poor."

"Do you know that Fraulein von Leuthen is poor? Her father is worse off
than Job, for he is in debt."

"If General von Leuthen's daughter were rich, or even moderately well
off, I never would have presumed to address your majesty on the subject,
for fear that you might misconstrue my intentions, and suppose that my
love was inspired by self-interest. Fortunately, Marie possesses nothing
but her noble, beautiful self. She leads a joyless existence under
the severe discipline of her cold-hearted parents; and therefore I can
truthfully say, that with me she will lose nothing, but gain what she
has never known--a tranquil, happy life, protected by my love."

"How much salary do you receive as teacher?"

"Majesty, as conrector of the college attached to the Gray Monastery,
three hundred and fifty dollars."

"Do you expect to live upon that yourself, and support a family
besides?"

"Sire, I shall earn money in other ways, as I have already done. I shall
write books. The publishers tell me that I am a favorite author, and
they pay me well."

"If on the morrow you should fall ill, your income would vanish, and
your family and you would starve together. No! no! you are an idealist,
you dream how life should be, and not as it is in truth! I have listened
to you, thinking that you would present some forcible argument upon
which to found your pretensions, but I hear only the ravings of a lover,
who believes the world turns upon the axis of his happiness. Let me tell
you that love is an ephemera, which merrily sports in the sunlight a few
short hours, and dies at sunset. Should a king forfeit his word for such
a short-lived bliss? Should he reward a man to whom he is indebted
by depriving him of a rich son-in-law, who is agreeable to him, and
substituting a poor one, from whom he can never hope to receive a
comfortable maintenance? You young people are all alike. You think only
of yourselves, and it is a matter of little consequence to you if the
aged pine away and die, provided you build up happiness on their graves!
I ask you, who have talked so much about your own wishes, and those of
your beloved, where is it written that man must be happy, that there
is a necessity to make him so? Do you suppose that I have ever been
happy--who have a long, active life in retrospection? Mankind have taken
good care that I should not sip this nectar