miliating persecutions."

"I think that you could select more fitting expressions, my brother,"
said the king, with flashing eyes. "You forget that you are speaking to
your king."

"But I remember that I am speaking to my brother, whose duty is to hear
the complaints which I have to utter against the king."

"Speak," said the king, after a slight pause. "Your brother will hear
you."

"I come to remind you of that hour," said the prince, solemnly, "in
which I gave my consent to be married. As I did so, sire, I said to you
that I should hold you responsible for this marriage which was made for
political purposes and not from love--that I would call you to account
before the throne of God, and there ask you by what right you robbed
me of my liberty, by what right you laid a chain upon my hand and heart
which love could not help me to bear. I said further, sire--if the
weight of this chain should become too heavy, and this unnatural
connection of a marriage without love should drive me to despair, that
upon your head would rest the curse of my misery, and that you would be
answerable for my destroyed existence, for my perished hopes."

"And I," said the king, "I took this responsibility upon me. As your
king and your elder brother, I reminded you of your duty to give the
state a family--sons who would be an example of courage and honor to the
men, and daughters who would be a pattern of virtue and propriety to the
women. In view of these duties, I demanded of you to be married."

"I come now to call you to account for this marriage," exclaimed the
prince, solemnly. "I have come to tell you that my heart is torn with
pain and misery; that I am the most wretched of men, and that you have
made me so--you, who forced me into this marriage, although you knew the
shame and despair of a marriage without love. You had already taken a
heavy responsibility upon yourself by your own marriage; and if you
were compelled to endure it so long as my father lived, you should have
relieved yourself from it so soon as you were free; that is, so soon
as you were king. But you preferred to continue in this unnatural
connection, or rather you put the chains from your hands, and let them
drag at your feet. Not to outrage the world by your divorce, you gave it
the bad example of a wretched marriage. You made yourself free, and you
made a slave of your poor wife, who has been a martyr to your humors and
cruelty. You profaned the institution o