y
associated with the strength of heart which you have proved in
dangers, the least of which none of us would have encountered
willingly, and which, forced on us, would have unnerved us all. I am
glad to prove to you that to some extent I depart from my national
character and approach, however, distantly, to yours. I can feel for a
friend's sorrow, and I can face what you seem to consider a real
danger. But you had a purpose in asking this audience. My ears are
open--your lips are unsealed."

"Prince," I replied, "what you have said opens the way to that I
wished to ask. You say truly that courage and tenderness have a common
root, as have the unmanly softness and equally unmanly hardness common
among your subjects. Those for whom death ends all utterly and for
ever will of necessity, at least as soon as the training of years and
of generations has rendered their thought consistent, dread death with
intensest fear, and love to brighten and sweeten life with every
possible enjoyment. Animal enjoyment becomes the most precious, since
it is the keenest. Higher pleasures lose half their value, when the
distinction between the two is reduced to the distinction between the
sensations of higher and lower nerve centres. Thus men care too much
for themselves to care for others; and after all, strong deep
affection, entwined with the heartstrings, can only torture and tear
the hearts for which death is a final parting. Such love as I have
felt for woman--even such love as I felt for her, your gift, whom I
have lost--would be pain intolerable if the thought were ever present
that one day we must, and any day we might, part for ever. I put the
knife against my breast, my life in your hand, when I say this, and I
ask of you no secrecy, no favour for myself; but that, as I trust you,
you will guard the life that is dearest to me if you take from me the
power to guard it.... There are those among your subjects who are not
the cowards you find around your throne, who are not brutal in their
households, not incapable of tenderness and sacrifice for others."

As I spoke I carefully watched the Prince's face, on which no shade of
displeasure was visible; rather the sentiment of one who is somewhat
gratified to hear a perplexing problem solved in a manner agreeable to
his wishes.

"And the reason is," I continued, "that these men and women believe or
know that they are answerable to an eternal Sovereign mightier than
yourself, and that