"The affair is now at an end. For love of the king, the queen wished to enter our church, or rather yours--pardon me, once and for all time, I have no church. The king behaved nobly in the matter. I shall never forget the time he told me of it. He is, indeed, a great man. How glorious it is, that there are princes on earth who realize our ideal of the perfect man. Free and yet self-possessed, unspoiled, unperverted and unbiased. If there were no kings, we could no longer know a free, beautiful, perfect man. I use the word _beautiful_ in its highest sense, and of course presuppose the existence of a noble mind. All are not gods who suffer themselves to be worshiped. "The poet and the king are, of all men, alone perfect. All others--be they musicians or painters, sculptors or architects, artists or scholars--have narrow, contracted vocations, solo instruments, as it were. The poet and the king are the only ones who grasp life in all its phases. To them, naught is devoid of meaning, because all belongs to them. The poet creates a world; the king is a world in himself. The poet knows and depicts the shepherd and the huntsman, the king and the waiting-maid, the seamstress--in fact, all. But the king is hunter and statesman, soldier and farmer, scholar and artist, all in himself. He represents the orchestra of talents. Thus is he king, and thus does he represent a people, an age--aye, humanity itself, and at its best. "Ah, Emma! Call me Turandot. Schoning, the poetic chamberlain, is also paying his addresses to me. "Do you know what I ought to have been? "I do. "Queen of a tribe of savages. That is what I was created for. My true vocation would be to found a new civilization. Don't laugh at me. I am not joking; indeed, I'm not. I am fit for something far better than all I have here. I am not modest. I judge others and myself, too. I know my merits and my faults, also. "On father's estate, there is a hammock that hangs between two elms. My greatest pleasure was to lie in it, suspended in the air, while I dreamt of distant woods. "Do you know some savage tribe that would elect me as its queen? I have procured some of the Indian melodies, if they really deserve the name. One of the professors at the university, who spent six years among the Indians, recently gave a lecture at court. He brought some of their instruments with him, and had them played on. There was more noise than music. It seemed like the lisping of a nation which, as regards civilization, is yet in its infancy." "_Four o'clock in the morning_, "Forget all that I have written to you, as you would the breezes and the weather-changes of yesterday. "I have just left my bed, in order to write to you. I cannot sleep. I am scarcely dressed while I sit here speaking to you. Oh, that I _could_ speak to you! Writing is a miserable makeshift--nay, helplessness itself.