interminable strife. Duke Ernst is deliberate and patient in dealing
with the unprecedented case. He waits until he can wait no longer.
Albrecht will not give up Agnes, nor Agnes give up him; Ernst respects
the sacrament of wedlock by which they are united, and only after two
and a half years does he sign the warrant by which Agnes was duly
condemned to death. Agnes dies in perfect innocence and constancy, a
victim of social convention. But Albrecht, whose disregard of this
convention was rebellion, and whose vengeance for his wife's death
brings him to the point of parricide, is made to see, not merely because
excommunication accompanies the ban of the empire on him as a rebel, but
also because of the instructive words and actions of his father, that
the social organization he has defied has itself a divine sanction, and
that a prince, standing by common consent at the head of that
organization, cannot with impunity undermine the basis of his
sovereignty. Devotion to him is like loyalty to the national ensign. The
ensign is nothing in itself, but it symbolizes the idea of the State;
and the prince is also the representative of an idea, which he must
continue to represent in its entirety, or he ceases to be the prince.
This lesson Albrecht learns when, like Kleist's _Prince of Homburg_, he
is made judge in his own case, and when he perceives at the cost of what
personal sacrifice his father has done his duty. The State prevails over
Albrecht as it prevails over Agnes, whose only fault was that she did
not immure her beauty in a nunnery.

The sanction of tradition and custom which Albrecht and Agnes could not
break in _Agnes Bernauer_ Hebbel most impressively demonstrated in
_Gyges and his Ring_. Kandaules, King of Lydia, is a rash innovator in
both public and private life. He despises rusty swords and uncomfortable
crowns, he means to do away with silly prejudices, and, like Herod,
regarding his wife as a precious possession only, he procures for his
friend Gyges an opportunity to see her unveiled. But she, an Indian
princess, is, in Christine Hebbel's words, a convolution of veils; her
veil is inseparable from herself; and the brutal violation of her
modesty is a less forgivable crime than the taking of her life would be.
The wearing of a veil may be a foolish custom; but use and want hallow
even the trivial. Half of our law is based upon precedent, and we are
protected at every turn by unwritten law, which is nothing e