moment when, seated under the weeping ash, your heart was filled with pity for the poor child that from the time it enters into the world is doubly helpless.  Do you still remember how you refused to rob it of its mother?  I appeal to the pure and genuine impulse of that moment.  You were noble and forgiving then, because you had not yet suffered.  You cast no stone at the fallen; you loved, and therefore you forgave.”

“O God!” cried the Queen, “and what has happened to me?  The woman on whose bosom my child rested is the most abandoned of creatures.  I loved her just as if she belonged to another world—­a world of innocence.  And now I am satisfied that she was the go-between, and that her naivete was a mere mask concealing an unparalleled hypocrite.  I imagined that truth and purity still dwelt in the simple rustic world—­but everything is perverted and corrupt.  The world of simplicity is base; aye, far worse than that of corruption!”

“I am not arguing about individuals.  I think you mistaken in regard to Walpurga; but admitting that you are right, of this at least we can be sure:  morality does not depend upon so-called education or ignorance, belief or unbelief.  The heart and mind which have regained purity and steadfastness alone possess true knowledge.  Extend your view beyond details and take in the whole—­that alone can comfort and reconcile you.”

“I see where you are, but I cannot get up there.  I can’t always be looking through your telescope that shows naught but blue sky.  I am too weak.  I know what you mean; you say in effect, ’Rise above these few people, above this span of space known as a kingdom:  compared with the universe, they are but as so many blades of grass or a mere clod of earth.’”

Gunther nodded a pleased assent:  but the Queen, in a sad voice, added:—­

“Yes, but this space and these people constitute my world.  Is purity merely imaginary?  If it be not about us, where can it be found?”

“Within ourselves,” replied Gunther.  “If it dwell within us, it is everywhere; if not, it is nowhere.  He who asks for more has not yet passed the threshold.  His heart is not yet what it should be.  True love for the things of this earth, and for God, the final cause of all, does not ask for love in return.  We love the divine spark that dwells in creatures themselves unconscious of it:  creatures who are wretched, debased, and as the church has it, unredeemed.  My Master taught me that the purest joys arise from this love of God or of eternally pure nature.  I made this truth my own, and you can and ought to do likewise.  This park is yours; but the birds that dwell in it, the air, the light, its beauty, are not yours alone, but are shared with you by all.  So long as the world is ours, in the vulgar sense of the word, we may love it; but when we have made it our own, in a purer and better sense, no one can take it from us.  The great thing is to be strong and to know that hatred is death, that love alone is life, and that the amount of love that we possess is the measure of the life and the divinity that dwells within us.”