Princess of Orange for his master, but that
the Princess seems to have made her choice already and thus is
apparently thwarting the Elector's plan, and when he asks the Prince if
he is not in some way tangled up in all this, the latter cries out
despairingly "I am lost," and hurries off to the Electress to entreat
her to intervene in his behalf.

On the way he receives a last impressive confirmation of the seriousness
of his situation. He sees his grave being dug by torchlight. In the
apartment of the Electress now takes place the much decried scene, which
people refuse to comprehend, and therefore, of course, will not forgive
the poet for writing. The Prince, in the presence of the girl he loves,
begs for his life. He does so in the most ignominious fashion; indeed,
in order to remove what he considers one of the worst rocks of offense,
he even renounces Nathalie, while she stands by shuddering at the state
of humiliation in which she beholds her heart's ideal. Certainly that is
utterly unworthy of a hero and of a man, and we may unquestionably
depend upon it that the poet, who in the same piece created the Elector
beside the Prince, knew that as well as any of us. In fact, this scene
has no other purpose than to show us that the Prince is not yet either a
hero or a man, and that along the path he has trodden so far nobody can
become either the one or the other. Up to this time he has led a hollow,
sham existence, which could very well fill his head with giddy
intoxication, but could not put any real backbone into him. Now,
however, the true meaning of life, at least in one form, in the form of
love, has at last come close enough to him to make the continuation of
this sham existence impossible; therein lies the real import of the
scene in which he and Nathalie declare their love, the great
significance of which I pointed out above. If that had not taken place
he would probably have become a duelling-celebrity, and after the first
shock of surprise he would have been able to show the same contempt of
death as a professional fencer accustomed to the duelling-ground, who,
with perfect right, considers life--his own namely--to be a mere cipher;
he would have awaited the bullets defiantly, with his arms crossed a la
Napoleon, and the Elector would have had him shot, would indeed have
been forced to have him shot. He can no longer sink to such depths as
that now, but still less can he find the real moral strength soberly to