rn."

Apparently, indeed, his "purpose" had been accomplished. By his wisdom,
his patience, and his example he had brought about, in the fullness of
time, the miraculous metamorphosis of which he had dreamed. The Prince
was his creation. An indefatigable toiler, presiding, for the highest
ends, over a great nation--that was his achievement; and he looked upon
his work and it was good. But had the Baron no misgivings? Did he never
wonder whether, perhaps, he might have accomplished not too little but
too much? How subtle and how dangerous are the snares which fate lays
for the wariest of men! Albert, certainly, seemed to be everything
that Stockmar could have wished--virtuous, industrious, persevering,
intelligent. And yet--why was it--all was not well with him? He was sick
at heart.

For in spite of everything he had never reached to happiness. His work,
for which at last he came to crave with an almost morbid appetite, was
a solace and not a cure; the dragon of his dissatisfaction devoured with
dark relish that ever-growing tribute of laborious days and nights;
but it was hungry still. The causes of his melancholy were hidden,
mysterious, unanalysable perhaps--too deeply rooted in the innermost
recesses of his temperament for the eye of reason to apprehend. There
were contradictions in his nature, which, to some of those who knew him
best, made him seem an inexplicable enigma: he was severe and gentle; he
was modest and scornful; he longed for affection and he was cold. He was
lonely, not merely with the loneliness of exile but with the loneliness
of conscious and unrecognised superiority. He had the pride, at once
resigned and overweening, of a doctrinaire. And yet to say that he
was simply a doctrinaire would be a false description; for the pure
doctrinaire rejoices always in an internal contentment, and Albert was
very far from doing that. There was something that he wanted and that
he could never get. What was it? Some absolute, some ineffable sympathy?
Some extraordinary, some sublime success? Possibly, it was a mixture
of both. To dominate and to be understood! To conquer, by the same
triumphant influence, the submission and the appreciation of men--that
would be worth while indeed! But, to such imaginations, he saw too
clearly how faint were the responses of his actual environment. Who was
there who appreciated him, really and truly? Who COULD appreciate him
in England? And, if the gentle virtue of an inward ex