erstand it?" he asked.

"Partly," I answered.

"We never had any hope," said he, almost luxuriously.

"But you enjoyed it very much?" I suggested; I was quite grave about it
in my mind, as well as in my face.

"Ah!" sighed he softly.

"And now it's all over!"

"I see her no more. I think of her. She thinks of me."

"Perhaps," said I meditatively. I was wondering whether they did not
think more about themselves. "Didn't you think you might manage it?"

"Alas, no. Sorrow was always in our joy."

"What are you going to do now?"

"What is there for me to do?" he asked despairingly. "Sometimes I think
that I can not endure to live."

"Baptiste told me that they watched you when you walked by the river."

He turned to me with a very interested expression of face.

"Do they really?" he asked.

"So Baptiste said."

"I promised her that, whatever happened, I would do nothing rash," said
he. "What would her feelings be?"

"We should all be very much distressed," said I, in my best court
manner.

"Ah, the world, the world!" sighed Baron Fritz. Then with an air of
great courage he went on. "Yet, how am I so different from her?"

"I think you are very much alike," said I.

"But she is--a Princess!"

I felt that he was laying a sort of responsibility on me. I could not
help Victoria being a Princess. He laughed bitterly; I seemed to be put
on my defence.

"I think it just as absurd as you do," I hastened to say.

"Absurd!" he echoed. "I didn't say that I thought it absurd. Would not
your Majesty rather say tragic? There must be kings, princes,
princesses--our hearts pay the price."

I was growing rather weary of this Baron, and wondering more and more
what Victoria had discovered in him. But my lack of knowledge led me
into an error; I attributed what wearied me in no degree to the Baron
himself, but altogether to his condition. "This, then, is what it is to
be in love," I was saying to myself; I summoned up the relics of my
scorn once so abundant and vigorous. The Baron perhaps detected the
beginnings of _ennui_; he rose to his feet.

"Forgive me, if I say that your Majesty will understand my feelings
better in two or three years," he observed.

"I suppose I shall," I answered, rather uneasily.

"Meanwhile I must live it down; I must master it."

"It's the only thing to do."

"And she----"

"Oh, she'll get over it," I assured him, nodding my head.

I am inclined sometimes to count it among my