is. You wish me to depict emotions.'

Hereupon this destroyer of temper embrowned his nostrils with snuff,
adding,--'I am unable to.'

'Then one is not to learn why the princess could not fulfil her
engagement?'

'Judged from the point of view of the pretender to the supreme honour
of the splendid alliance, the fault was none of hers. She overlooked his
humble, his peculiarly dubious, birth.'

'Her father interposed?'

'No.'

'The Family?'

'Quite inefficacious to arrest her determinations.'

'What then--what was in her way?'

'Germany.'

'What?'

'Great Germany, young gentleman. I should have premised that, besides
mental, she had eminent moral dispositions,--I might term it the
conscience of her illustrious rank. She would have raised the poet to
equal rank beside her had she possessed the power. She could and did
defy the Family, and subdue her worshipping father, the most noble
prince, to a form of paralysis of acquiescence--if I make myself
understood. But she was unsuccessful in her application for the sanction
of the Diet.'

'The Diet?'

'The German Diet. Have you not lived among us long enough to know that
the German Diet is the seat of domestic legislation for the princely
Houses of Germany? A prince or a princess may say, "I will this or
that." The Diet says, "Thou shalt not"; pre-eminently, "Thou shalt not
mix thy blood with that of an impure race, nor with blood of inferiors."
Hence, we have it what we see it, a translucent flood down from the
topmost founts of time. So we revere it. "Qua man and woman," the Diet
says, by implication, "do as you like, marry in the ditches, spawn
plentifully. Qua prince and princess, No! Your nuptials are nought.
Or would you maintain them a legal ceremony, and be bound by them, you
descend, you go forth; you are no reigning sovereign, you are a private
person." His Serene Highness the prince was thus prohibited from
affording help to his daughter. The princess was reduced to the decision
either that she, the sole child born of him in legal wedlock, would
render him qua prince childless, or that she would--in short, would
have her woman's way. The sovereignty of Leiterstein continued
uninterruptedly with the elder branch. She was a true princess.'

'A true woman,' said I, thinking the sneer weighty.

The Chancellor begged me to recollect that he had warned me there was no
romance to be expected.

I bowed; and bowed during the remainder of the interview.