t, after all. I am constantly thinking that
this letter to you is still lying in my portfolio. If any one at court
knew what I have written--I have already been on the point of burning
these sheets. I beg of you, destroy them. You will,--will you not? or
else conceal them in some safe place. I cannot help it, I must tell you
all.

"The queen is very kind to me. Her present condition invests her with a
touching, I might almost say, a sacred character.

"'Man is God's temple,' said the archbishop, who paid us a visit
yesterday, 'and of no one is this so true as of a young mother; above
all, a young royal mother.'

"What a noble thought!

"I now think quite differently of the queen. When she said to me,
yesterday: 'Countess Irma, the king speaks of you with great affection,
and I am very glad of it,' I thought to myself: Blessed be the
etiquette that permits me to bend down before the queen and kiss her
hand.

"Her hand is now quite full and round."

"_June 5th_,

"The most cheerful hours are those we spend at breakfast. I do not know
how, after such Olympic moments, the rest can content themselves with
every-day matters, for I always wing my flight into the boundless realm
of music.

"The king is very kind to me. He is of a noble and earnest character.
While I was walking with him in the park, yesterday, and we both kept
step so beautifully, he said:

"'You seem like a true comrade to me, for we always walk together in
perfect step. No woman has ever walked thus with me. With the queen I
am always obliged to slacken my usual pace.'

"'That is only of late, I suppose.'

"'No, it is always so. Will you permit me, when we are alone, to
address you as my good comrade?'

"We stopped where we were, like two children who have lost their way in
the woods and do not know where they are.

"'Let us return,' was all I could say.

"We went back to the palace. I admire the king's self-control, for
he at once entered into earnest conversation with his minister. Such
self-control can only result from great education and innate mental
power.

"But there is one thing more. Let me confide it to you.

"I feel sure that the queen meditates a step which must needs be
fraught with evil to the king, to herself, and to who knows how many
more. I would have liked to acquaint him with my fears, but I dared not
speak of the queen at that time, and Doctor Gunther, the king's