The king was alone, and pacing his room nervously.  It was in vain that Biche, his favorite hound, raised herself up and drew near to him.  The wise little animal seemed, indeed, to understand the sadness of her master, and looked up at him with sorrowful and sympathetic eyes.  Once Frederick murmured half aloud:  “She has sworn to hate me, and she keeps her oath.”  After long thought, he seemed to be resolved, and drew near to the door; he opened it and stood a moment on the threshold, then closed it again, and said:  “No!  I dare not do that.  I dare not do what any other man might do in my place; not I—­I am a king.  Alas! men think it is a light matter to be a king; that the crown brings no care, no weight to the brow and the heart.  Our hearts’ blood is often the lime with which our crowns are secured.”  He sighed deeply, then stood up and shook himself like a lion, when, after a long repose, he rouses himself to new life and action.  “Oh!  I am sentimental,” he said, with a sad smile.  “I doubt if a king has a right to dream.  Away, then, with sentiments and sighs!  Truly, what would Maria Theresa say if she knew that the King of Prussia was a sentimentalist, and sighed and loved like a young maiden?  Would she not think she had Silesia again in her dress-pocket?”

While the king struggled with his passion, Barbarina had a far more dangerous enemy to contend with.  Sentimentality is veiled in melancholy, in softened light and faded tints; but ennui has no eye, nor mind, nor heart for any thing.  It is a fearful enemy!  Barbarina was weary, oh, so weary!  Was it perhaps impatience to appear again upon the stage which made the hours so leaden, so long drawn out?  She lay the whole day stretched out upon her sofa, her eyes wide open, silent, and sighing, not responding to Marietta’s loving words by a glance, or a movement of the eyelash.  Marietta proposed to assemble her friends, but she affirmed that society was more wearisome than solitude.

At the end of three days, Barbarina sprang from her sofa and tried to walk.  “It gives me no pain,” said she, walking through the room.

“Yes.  I remember, Arias said the same as she handed the dagger to her beloved,” replied Marietta.

“But I have no beloved,” said Barbarina; “no one loves me, no one understands this poor, glowing, agonized heart.”  As she said this, a flood of tears gushed from her eyes, and her form trembled with a storm of passion.

“Ah, Sorella, how can you say that—­you who are so much loved, so highly prized?”

Barbarina smiled contemptuously, and shook her head.  “Do you call that love? these empty words, this everlasting, unmeaning praise; this rapture about my beauty, my grace, and my skill, is this worship?  Go, go, Marietta, you know it is not love, it is not worship.  They amuse themselves with a rare and foreign flower, which is only beautiful because it has been dearly paid for; which is only wondered at