at the service offered was sheerest lip-service, a perpetual
shutting of the eyes to hypocrisy and grasping selfishness. Conceive,
you tourist full of illusions standing free down there in the market
place, the frightfulness of never being alone a moment from the time
you get out of bed to the time you get into it again. Conceive the
deadly patience needed to stand passive and be talked to, amused,
taken care of, all day long for years. Conceive the intolerableness,
if you are at all sensitive, of being watched by eyes so sharp and
prying, so eager to note the least change of expression and to use the
conclusions drawn for personal ends that nothing, absolutely nothing,
escapes them. Priscilla's sisters took all these things as a matter of
course, did not care in the least how keenly they were watched and
talked over, never wanted to be alone, liked being fussed over by
their ladies-in-waiting. They, happy girls, had thick skins. But
Priscilla was a dreamer of dreams, a poet who never wrote poems, but
whose soul though inarticulate was none the less saturated with the
desires and loves from which poems are born. She, like her sisters,
had actually known no other states; but then she dreamed of them
continuously, she desired them continuously, she read of them
continuously; and though there was only one person who knew she did
these things I suppose one person is enough in the way of
encouragement if your mind is bent on rebellion. This old person,
cause of all the mischief that followed, for without his help
I do not see what Priscilla could have done, was the ducal
librarian--_Hofbibliothekar_, head, and practically master of the
wonderful collection of books and manuscripts whose mere catalogue
made learned mouths in distant parts of Europe water and learned lungs
sigh in hopeless envy. He too had officials under him, but they were
unlike the others: meek youths, studious and short-sighted, whose
business as far as Priscilla could see was to bow themselves out
silently whenever she and her lady-in-waiting came in. The librarian's
name was Fritzing; plain Herr Fritzing originally, but gradually by
various stages at last arrived at the dignity and sonorousness of Herr
Geheimarchivrath Fritzing. The Grand Duke indeed had proposed to
ennoble him after he had successfully taught Priscilla English
grammar, but Fritzing, whose spirit dwelt among the Greeks, could not
be brought to see any desirability in such a step. Priscill