The young man raised his eyebrows deprecatingly, with a slight ironical smile, and dropped the subject. But the learned professor as in duty bound, reported the conversation to his pupil’s father; with the additional observation that he feared, he very humbly and respectfully feared, that the developing mind of the prince appeared undesirably disposed towards discursive philosophies, which were wholly unnecessary for the position he was destined to occupy. Whereupon the King took his son to task on the subject with a mingling of kindness and humour.
“Do not turn philosopher!” he said--“For philosophy will not so much content you with life, as with death! Philosophy will chill your best impulses and most generous enthusiasms,--it will make you over-cautious and doubtful of your friends,--it will cause you to be indifferent to women in the plural, but it will hand you over, a weak and helpless victim to the _one_ woman,--when she comes,--as she is bound to come. There is no one so hopelessly insane as a philosopher in love! Love women, but not _a_ woman!”
“In so doing I should follow the wisest of examples,--yours, Sir!” replied the prince with a familiarity more tender than audacious, for his father was a man of fine presence and fascinating manner, and knew well the extent of his power to charm and subjugate the fairer sex,--“But I have a fancy that love,--if it exists anywhere outside the dreams of the poets,--is unknown to kings.”
The monarch bent his brows frowningly, and his eyes were full of a deep and bitter melancholy.
“You mistake!” he said slowly--“Love,--and by that name I mean a wholly different thing from Passion,--comes to kings as to commoners,--but whereas the commoner may win it if he can, the king must reject it. But it comes,--and leaves a blank in the proudest life when it goes!”
He turned away abruptly, and the conversation was not again resumed. But when he died, those who prepared his body for burial, found a gold chain round his neck, holding the small medallion portrait of a woman, and a curl of soft fair hair. Needless to say the portrait was not that of the late Queen-Consort, who had died some years before her Royal spouse, nor was the hair hers,--but when they brought the relic to the new King, he laid it back with his own hands on his father’s lifeless breast, and let it go into the grave with him. For, being no longer the crowned Servant of the State, he had the right as a mere dead man, to the possession of his love-secret.