“My dear, dear Ulrica!” he cried, weeping and sobbing painfully, “must it then be so?  Do I indeed see you for the last time?” With childish eagerness he embraced his sister, and leaned his head upon her bosom.  The princess could no longer control herself; she mingled her tears with those of her brother, and drawing him softly out of view, she whispered weeping and trembling words of tenderness; she implored him not to forget her, and promised to love him always.

The queen-mother stood near.  She had forgotten that she was a queen, and remembered only that she was a mother about to lose her child forever; the thought of royal dignity and courtly etiquette was for some moments banished from her proud heart; she saw her children heart-broken and weeping before her, and she wept with them. [Footnote:  Schneider’s “History of the Opera and the Royal Opera-House.”]

The people saw this.  Never had the most gracious smile, the most condescending word of her majesty, won their hearts so completely as these tears of the mother.  Every mother felt for this woman, who, though a queen, suffered a mother’s anguish; and every maiden wept with this young girl, who, although entering upon a splendid future, shed hot tears over the happy past and the beloved home.  When the men saw their wives and children weeping, and the prince not ashamed of his tears, they also wept, from sympathy and love to the royal house.  In place of the gay jest and merry laughter wont to prevail between the acts, scarcely suppressed sobs were the only sounds to be heard.  The glorious singer Salimberri was unapplauded.  The Barbarina danced, but the accustomed bravos were hushed.

Was it the remembrance of this touching scene which moved the king so profoundly?  Did this eternal separation from his beloved sister weigh upon his heart?  The king himself knew not, or he would not acknowledge to himself what emotion produced this wild unrest.  After laying his flute aside, he took up Livy, which lay always upon his writing-table, and tried to read a chapter; but the letters danced before his eyes, and his thoughts wandered far away from the old Roman.  He threw the book peevishly aside, and, folding his arms, walked rapidly backward and forward.

“Ah me! ah me!  I wish this were the day of battle!” he murmured.  “To-day I should be surely victorious!  I am in a fierce and desperate mood.  The wild roar of conflict would be welcome as a sweet home song in a strange land, and the shedding of blood would be medicinal, and relieve my oppressed brain.  What is it which has drawn this veil over my spirit?  What mighty and mysterious power has stretched her hand over me?  With what bounds am I held a helpless captive?  I feel, but I cannot see them, and cannot tear them apart.  No, no!  I will be lord of myself.  I will be no silent dreamer.  I will live a true life.  I will work, and be a faithful ruler, if I cannot be a free and happy man.”