“I have read many histories of kings,” she continued slowly; “Of their treacheries and cruelties; of their neglect of their people! Seldom have they been truly great! The few who are reported as wise, lived and reigned so many ages ago, that we cannot tell whether their virtues were indeed as admirable as described,--or whether their vices were not condoned by a too-partial historian. A Throne has no attraction for me! The only sorrow I have ever known in my life, is the discovery that the man I love best in the world is a king’s son! Would to God he were poor and unrenowned as I thought him to be, when I married him!--for so we should always have been happy. But now I have to think for him as well as for myself;--his position is as hard as mine,--and we accept our fate as a trial of our love. Love cannot be forced,--it must root itself, and grow where it will. It has made us two as one;--one in thought,--one in hope,--one in faith! No earthly power can part us. You would marry him to another woman, and force him to commit a great sin ‘for the good of the country’? I tell you, if you do that,--if any king or prince does that,--God’s curse will surely fall upon the Throne, and all that do inherit it!” She did not raise her voice,--she spoke in low thrilling accents, without excitement, but with measured force and calm. Then she beckoned the Crown Prince to her side. He instantly obeyed her gesture. Taking him by the hand, she advanced a little, and with him confronted both the King and Queen. “Hear me, your Majesties both!” she said in clear, firm accents; “And when you have heard, be satisfied as to ‘the good of the country,’ and let me depart to my own home in peace, away from all your crushing and miserable conventions. I take your son by the hand, and even as I swore my faith to him at the marriage altar, so I swear to you that he is free to follow his own inclination;--his law is mine,--his will my pleasure,--and in everything I shall obey him, save in this one decree, which I make for myself in your Majesties’ sovereign presence--that never, so help me God, will I claim or share my husband’s rank as Crown Prince, or set foot within this palace, which is his home, again, till a greater voice than that of any king,--the voice of the Nation itself, calls upon me to do so!” This proud declaration was entirely unexpected; and both the King and Queen regarded the beautiful speaker in undisguised amazement. She, gently dropping the Prince’s hand, met their eyes with a wistful pathos in her own. “Will that satisfy you?” she asked, a slight tremor shaking her voice as she put the question. The King at once advanced, and now spoke frankly, and without any ceremony.