ou please me.'" Truly she is right; now the man and the hero is
complete and never again in all eternity can he be seized with another
paroxysm of hollow self-glorification or of petty cowardice--which,
indeed, were intimately connected one with the other. The Prince has
become a stoutly forged link in the moral order of the universe, and the
more difficult it was for him, the more firmly he will endure. Whoever
does not find in this scene complete compensation for the preceding one
with the Electress--in which it is rooted like the flower in the black
earth; and whoever does not understand at the same time that the one was
not possible without the other, and that cause and effect cannot be
separated, to that person I must deny all capability of comprehending a
drama in its totality. The change effected by the Elector is one of the
most sublime conceptions that any literature can show, and is very far
from having an equal in our own.

The fifth act brings the necessary test. The Elector is entreated on all
sides to pardon the Prince; his family, the army, the Princess, all urge
him, indeed the latter--a fine touch--repeats the offense of her lover.
On her own authority, she calls a regiment of which she is chief, to
Fehrbellin, in order that the officers there may also sign their names
to a petition which is being circulated, and thus she could, in her
turn, actually be amenable to a court martial. The Elector allows
nothing to be wrung from him by coaxing or by bullying, but no one who
has an idea of the structure of the play need tremble any longer for the
Prince. It can already be seen that the Elector has no intention of
allowing matters to be carried to extremities from the leniency with
which he is inclined to treat old Kottwitz, who has suddenly arrived
with the cavalry, with out his knowledge and, as he believes, without
his orders. When Kottwitz presses him hard, and heatedly assures him
that at the very first opportunity he will repeat the act of the Prince,
which he once condemned but now must approve,--since for one case where
the impulse of the heart, the sudden instinct, does harm, there are ten
in which it alone can lead to the goal,--the Elector answers that lie
does not know how to convince him, but he will call an advocate who is
able to teach the old gentleman better than he can what discipline and
obedience are. Then he sends for the Prince, and the latter, solemnly
and of his own accord, declares bef