Tell me not that marriages of inclination often turn out ill, and forced marriages often well enough, as may be seen in the instance of the Moravians, the old Germans, and Orientals. Name me rather all barbaric times and nations, in which--for both indeed only reckon the man, never the wife--a happy marriage means nothing more than a happy husband. No one stands by near enough to hear and to count a woman's sighs; the unheard pang becomes at last speechless; new wounds weaken the bleeding of the oldest. Further: the ill-luck of fancy-marriages is chargeable upon your very opposition to them, and your war against the married couple. Still further: every forced marriage is, in fact, for the most part, half a marriage of fancy. Finally: the best marriages are in the middling class, where the bond is more apt to be love; and the worst in the higher, where it is more a mercenary motive; and as often as in these classes a prince should choose merely with his heart, he would get a heart, and never lose nor betray it. Now, then, what sort of a hand is that into which you so often force the fairest, finest, richest, but rebellious one? Commonly, a black, old, withered, greedy fist. For decrepit, rich, or aspiring libertines have too much of the connoisseur, too much satiety and freedom, to steal any other than the most splendid creatures; the less perfect fall into the hands and homes of mere lovers and amateurs. But how base is a man, who, abandoned of his own character, backed merely by the despotic edict of a stranger, paying for his fortune with a stolen one, can now drag away the unprotected soul from the yearning eyes of a weeping love into a long, cold life, and clasp her to his arms as against the edges of frosty swords, and therein so near to his eye see her bleed and grow pale and quiver! The man of honor even gives with a blush, but he takes not with a blush; and the better lion, the beast, spares woman;[156] but these soul-buyers extort from constrained beings at last even the testimony of free-will. Mother of the poor heart, which thou wilt bless by misfortune, hear me! Suppose thy daughter should harden herself against the misery which is forced upon her, hast thou not reduced her rich dream of life to empty sleep, and taken out of it love's islands of the blest, and all that bloomed thereon; the fair days when one roamed over them, and the perpetual happy retrospect of them when they already lie with their blooming peaks low in the horizon? Mother, if this happy time was ever in thy breast, then snatch it not from thy daughter; and if it was barbarously torn from thee, then think of thy bitter pang, and bequeath it not!