“Here all of them think me boundlessly naive, because I have the courage to think for myself....

“The king loves reserve, but also gay freeness.  The queen is too serious—­eternal organ sound; but you cannot dance to an organ, and we are young and love to dance.

“A peasant woman from the mountains is nurse to the crown prince.  I was with her at the king’s request.  I stood by the cot when the king arrived.  He said to me gently:  ’It is true, an angel stands by the child’s cradle.’  He laid his hand upon mine, which rested on the rail of the cot.  The king went.  And just imagine what occurred.  The nurse, a fresh, merry person with blue eyes, buxom and massive, a perfect peasant beauty, to whom I showed friendliness, so as to cheer her up and save her from feeling homesick, the nurse tells me in bald words:  ’You are an adulteress!  You have exchanged loving glances with the king!’

“Emmy!  How you were right in telling me that I idealise the people, and that they are as corrupt as the great world, and, moreover, without the curb of culture.

“No! she is a good, intelligent woman.  She begged my pardon for her impertinence; I remain friendly towards her.  Yes, I will.”

Irma’s devotion to her king had something of hero-worship.  And the king, who loved his wife sincerely, but was, and wanted to be, of a heroic nature, and who was averse to all that savoured of self-torment and sentimentality, was attracted by Countess Irma’s intellectual freedom and esprit.  He felt in her a kindred spirit.  Her company was stimulating; it could not affect the even tenour of his conjugal love.  But the queen, in her sentimental exultation, sought ever for new “documents” to demonstrate the depth of her affection.  And now she wanted to give the supreme proof by renouncing her Lutheran faith to enter into a yet closer union with her Catholic husband.  To the king this sacrifice seemed not only sentimentally weak, but politically unwise.  He received the confidence coldly, and begged her to reconsider the matter.  He sent Dr. Gunther, who, in spite of his democratic tendencies, was held in high esteem by the king, and had great influence over the queen, to exercise his persuasive powers—­with no result.

Where wisdom and experience had failed, the voice of Nature, speaking out of Walpurga’s childish chatter, succeeded.  Walpurga told the queen of her father—­how one day on the lake, on hearing the choral singing of the peasants, he had said:  “Now I know how the Almighty feels up there in Heaven!  All the Churches, ours, and the Lutheran, and the Jewish, and the Turkish, they are all voices in the song.  Each sings as he knows, and yet it sounds well together up there.”  The queen was radiant next day, when she informed her spouse that she had the courage of her own inconsistency and that she had resolved to do his will.  The sacrifice was received with coolness.  Was it that her noble act was construed as further evidence of weakness?