ttle comedy
from curious eyes.

One evening, in the moonlight, the duchess saw him climb a garden wall,
with a lute in his hand, then the sky became overcast, and she could
distinguish him no more; she could only see a lighted window where a
beautiful girl was standing. The maiden charmed her beyond measure,
and she grew hot and cold with the pleasurable anticipation that George
might win her for his wife some day and bring her home. But then she
reflected that he was a child born to ill-luck, and as such would never
be blessed with the love of so exquisite a creature.

What she saw in the next few weeks confirmed this opinion. His manner
was usually decisive, abrupt and self-reliant, but now he seemed to her
like a clock that points to one hour while it strikes another. At the
works he gave his orders as firmly and decidedly as ever; but as soon as
he was alone, he looked like a criminal sentenced to death, and either
sat bowed down and miserable or else paced up and down the floor
restlessly, gesticulating wildly. Often when he beat his forehead with
the palm of his hand or struck his breast with his fist, his mother was
frightened.

Once, after a garden party, where he had been fortunate enough to walk
alone for a full hour under a shady pergola with the daughter of the
gentleman who owned the building in progress, and to kiss her hand
many times, he burst into tears as soon as he was in his own room,
and behaved so wildly that his mother feared for his reason and wept
bitterly also. Just at this time she ought to have felt nothing but joy,
joy, heart-felt and unadulterated, for it appeared that the chief of the
councillors had in truth been more far-sighted, than other people and
had not made a mistake in his choice of a queen, for she had just borne
a son, and, moreover, one that was a true Greylock. His grey lock was
indeed somewhat thin and lacked the firm curl of the former ones; but
every one who was not colour-blind must acknowledge that it was grey.

The duchess would have liked to rejoice sincerely in her grandchild, but
her affections were divided, and even when she held it in her arms, she
yearned for the magic glass and a sight of her unlucky son.

Wendelin XVI., who had long been satiated with the pleasures which his
position offered him, finding them all flat and insipid, experienced
for the first time in twelve years a sensation of delight, like any one
else, when he heard the faint cry of the inf