"The professor says that I have talent for modeling. This has made me
quite happy. Painting and drawing are only half the battle--mere
makeshifts. Will you permit me, on my return, to make a _relievo_ of
you?

"Did I not, in one of my letters to you, speak of a secret in regard to
the queen?

"I think I did.

"The affair is now at an end. For love of the king, the queen wished to
enter our church, or rather yours--pardon me, once and for all time, I
have no church. The king behaved nobly in the matter. I shall never
forget the time he told me of it. He is, indeed, a great man. How
glorious it is, that there are princes on earth who realize our ideal
of the perfect man. Free and yet self-possessed, unspoiled, unperverted
and unbiased. If there were no kings, we could no longer know a free,
beautiful, perfect man. I use the word _beautiful_ in its highest
sense, and of course presuppose the existence of a noble mind. All are
not gods who suffer themselves to be worshiped.

"The poet and the king are, of all men, alone perfect. All others--be
they musicians or painters, sculptors or architects, artists or
scholars--have narrow, contracted vocations, solo instruments, as it
were. The poet and the king are the only ones who grasp life in all its
phases. To them, naught is devoid of meaning, because all belongs to
them. The poet creates a world; the king is a world in himself. The
poet knows and depicts the shepherd and the huntsman, the king and the
waiting-maid, the seamstress--in fact, all. But the king is hunter and
statesman, soldier and farmer, scholar and artist, all in himself. He
represents the orchestra of talents. Thus is he king, and thus does he
represent a people, an age--aye, humanity itself, and at its best.

"Ah, Emma! Call me Turandot. Schoning, the poetic chamberlain, is also
paying his addresses to me.

"Do you know what I ought to have been?

"I do.

"Queen of a tribe of savages. That is what I was created for. My true
vocation would be to found a new civilization. Don't laugh at me. I am
not joking; indeed, I'm not. I am fit for something far better than all
I have here. I am not modest. I judge others and myself, too. I know my
merits and my faults, also.

"On father's estate, there is a hammock that hangs between two elms. My
greatest pleasure was to lie in it, suspended in the air, while I
dreamt of distant woods.

"Do you know some savage tribe that would elect me as its queen? I hav