them a decent insincerity.

Chancellor von Redwitz called on me, and amused me with secret anecdotes
of all the royal Houses of Germany, amusing chiefly through the
veneration he still entertained for them. The grave senior was doing his
utmost to divert one of my years. The immoralities of blue blood, like
the amours of the Gods, were to his mind tolerable, if not beneficial to
mankind, and he presumed I should find them toothsome. Nay, he besought
me to coincide in his excuses of a widely charming young archduchess, for
whom no estimable husband of a fitting rank could anywhere be discovered,
so she had to be bestowed upon an archducal imbecile; and hence--and
hence--Oh, certainly! Generous youth and benevolent age joined hands of
exoneration over her. The princess of Satteberg actually married, under
covert, a colonel of Uhlans at the age of seventeen; the marriage was
quashed, the colonel vanished, the princess became the scandalous Duchess
of Ilm-Ilm, and was surprised one infamous night in the outer court of
the castle by a soldier on guard, who dragged her into the guard-room and
unveiled her there, and would have been summarily shot for his pains but
for the locket on his breast, which proved him to be his sovereign's
son.--A perfect romance, Mr. Chancellor. We will say the soldier son
loved a delicate young countess in attendance on the duchess. The
countess spies the locket, takes it to the duchess, is reprimanded, when
behold! the locket opens, and Colonel von Bein appears as in his blooming
youth, in Lancer uniform.--Young sir, your piece of romance has
exaggerated history to caricature. Romances are the destruction of human
interest. The moment you begin to move the individuals, they are puppets.
'Nothing but poetry, and I say it who do not read it'--(Chancellor von
Redwitz is the speaker)'nothing but poetry makes romances passable: for
poetry is the everlastingly and embracingly human. Without it your
fictions are flat foolishness, non-nourishing substance--a species of
brandy and gruel!--diet for craving stomachs that can support nothing
solider, and must have the weak stuff stiffened. Talking of poetry, there
was an independent hereditary princess of Leiterstein in love with a
poet!--a Leonora d'Este!--This was no Tasso. Nevertheless, she proposed
to come to nuptials. Good, you observe? I confine myself to the relation
of historical circumstances; in other words, facts; and of good or bad I
know not.'