as not consulted! I did not
know--I had never seen the man to whom I must swear eternal love and
faith. This was also your sad fate, my prince. We had never met. We
saw each other for the first time as we stood before God's altar, and
exchanged our vows to the sound of merry wedding-bells, and the roar of
cannon. I am always thinking that the bells ring and the cannon thunders
at royal marriages, to drown the timid, trembling yes, forced from
pallid, unwilling lips, which rings in the ears of God and men like a
discord--like the snap of a harp-string. The bells chimed melodiously.
No man heard the yes at which our poor hearts rebelled! We alone heard
and understood! You were noble, prince; you had been forced to swear a
falsehood before the altar; but in the evening, when we were alone in
our apartment, you told me the frank and honest truth. State policy
united us; we did not and could never love each other! You were amiable
enough to ask me to be your friend--your sister; and to give me an
immediate proof of a brother's confidence, you confessed to me that,
with all the ardor and ecstasy of your youthful heart, you had loved a
woman who betrayed you, and thus extinguished forever all power to
love. I, my prince, could not follow your frank example, and give a like
confidence. I had nothing to relate. I had not loved! I loved you not!
I was therefore grateful when you asked no love from me. You only asked
that, with calm indifference, we should remain side by side, and greet
each other, before the world, with the empty titles of wife and husband.
I accepted this proposal joyfully, to remain an object of absolute
indifference to you, and to regard you in the same light. I cannot,
therefore, comprehend why you now reproach me."

"Yes! yes! I said and did all that," said Prince Henry, pale and
trembling with emotion. "I was a madman! More than that, I was a
blasphemer! Love is as God--holy, invisible, and eternal; and he who
does not believe in her immortality, her omnipresence, is like the
heathen, who has faith only in his gods of wood and stone, and whose
dull eyes cannot behold the invisible glory of the Godhead. My heart had
at that time received its first wound, and because it bled and pained me
fearfully, I believed it to be dead, and I covered it up with bitter
and cruel remembrances, as in an iron coffin, from which all escape was
impossible. An angel drew near, and laid her soft, fine hand upon my
coffin, my wou