The King's Mirror by Antonio Hope

I take it that generally when middle age looks back on the emotions of youth and its temptations, it is to smile at the wildness of the first and to marvel at the victories of the second. That is not my mood when I recall the relation between the Countess and myself. For sometimes, while passion becomes less fierce, aspiration grows less exalted. The man who calls most, if not all, things vanity, will yield to desires which some high-strung ideal in the boy would rout. At forty the feelings are not so strong as at twenty, but neither are the ambitions, the dreams, the conception of self. It is easier to resist, but it may not seem so well worth while. Thus it is with me. I wonder not at the beginning or progress of my first love, but at the manner of its end, asking myself incredulously what motive or what notion had power to hold back the flood of youth, seeking almost in vain to re-discover the spring that moved me then. Yet, though I can not feel it again, I know dimly what it was, that high, strange, noble, ludicrous ideal of my office which so laid hold on me as to scatter passion's forces and wrest me from the arms of her I loved. I can not now so think of my kingship, so magnify its claim, or conceive that it matters so greatly to the world how I hold it or what manner of man I show myself. I come to the conclusion (though it may seem to border on paradox) that in a like case I could not, or should not, do now what I did then. I suppose that it is some such process as this, a weakening of emotion parallel with a lowering of ideal, that makes us, as we grow older, think ourselves so much wiser and know ourselves to be so little better.

I had charged Wetter to say nothing to the Countess, but he disobeyed me. He had been to her and told her all that passed between us. I knew this the moment I entered her room. Her agitated nervous air showed me that she had been informed of the withdrawal of my gift, was aware that the Embassy was no longer hers to give to Wetter or another, and was wondering helplessly what the meaning of the change might be. To her, as to Wetter, the death of Hammerfeldt must have seemed the removal of an impediment; only through the curious processes of my own mind did it raise an obstacle insurmountable. She had liked the Prince, but feared him; she imagined my feelings to have been the same, and perhaps in his lifetime they were. Then should not I, who had been brought to defy him living, more readily disregard him dead?