The King's Mirror

I see myself with Krak and Princess Heinrich. Pride illuminated their faces with a cold radiance, and their utterances were conceived in the spirit of a _Nunc Dimittis_. They co...

The contrast of outer and inner, of the world's myself and my own myself, of others as they seem to me and to themselves (of the reality they may be, through inattention or duln...

The next morning all Artenberg had the air of being rather ashamed of itself. Styrian traditions had been set at naught. Princess Heinrich considered that the limits of becoming...

I should be doing injustice to my manners and (a more serious offence) distorting truth, if I represented myself as a shy gaby, afraid or ashamed to make love because people kne...

Princess Heinrich held a reception of all sorts and conditions of those in Forstadt who were receivable. So comprehensive was the party that to be included conveyed no complimen...

The death of Prince von Hammerfeldt furnished the subject of a picture exhibited at Forstadt with great success a few years ago. The old man's simple room, its plain furniture,...

To many the picture presented by my life might seem that of a man who detects the trap and yet walks into it, sinks under burdens that he might cast aside, groans at chains that...

When my years and my mood are considered, it may appear that I had enough to do in keeping my own life in the channel of wisdom and discretion. So it seemed to myself, and I was...

There was no doubt that they practised the marriage-song. Coralie's voice echoed through the house as we entered. For a moment we paused in the hall to listen. Then Wetter dashe...

At Artenberg, whither we went when I was convalescent, the family atmosphere recalled old days. We were all in disgrace--Victoria because she had not managed her husband better,...

The night brought me little rest and no wisdom. As though its own strength were not enough, my passion sought and found an ally in a defiant obstinacy, which now made me desirou...

During the months that followed the departure of the Sempachs I engaged myself busily in public affairs, in the endeavour to gain better acquaintance with the difficult trade wh...

The economy of belief which wisdom practices forbids us to embrace fanciful theories where commonly observed facts will serve our turn. They talk now about strange communication...

I had a whimsical desire that somebody, no matter who, should speak the truth about the affair. That I myself should was out of the question, nor would candour be admissible fro...

Struboff's inevitable discovery of my real name was a disaster; it delayed my operations for three days, since it filled his whole being with a sense of abasement and a hope of...

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 t...

A few days later my mother informed me that Victoria and her husband had proposed to pay us a long visit. I could make no objection. Princess Heinrich observed that I should be...

Soon after my return my mother and I went into residence at Forstadt. My time was divided between mastering my public duties under Hammerfeldt's tuition, and playing a prominent...

I feel that I give involuntarily a darker colour to my life than the truth warrants. When we sit down and reflect we are apt to become the prey of a curious delusion; pain seems...

I was reading the other day the memoirs of an eminent English man of letters, now dead. He had paid a long visit to Forstadt, and had much to say (sometimes, I think, in a vein...

I was in the Garden Pavilion only the other morning with one of my sons, teaching him how to use his weapons. Suddenly he pointed at a bullet-mark not in any of the targets, but...

The departure to Biarritz was carried through without further overt hostilities. It chanced to be holidays with me, all my tutors were on their vacation, my governor, Vohrenlorf...

Even such results as might be looked for on Prince von Hammerfeldt's theory of the meaning of freedom were in my case arrested and postponed by a very serious illness which atta...

The foreign tour I undertook in my eighteenth year has been sufficiently, or even more than sufficiently, described by the accomplished and courtly pen of Vohrenlorf's secretary...

I have not the heart to set down what passed between my sister and myself when I broke to her the news that I must be against her. Impulsive in all her moods, and ungoverned in...

A man's _puerilia_ are to himself not altogether puerile; they are parcel of the complex explanation of his existent self. He starts, I suppose, as something, a very malleable s...

Physically my parents' child, with my father's tall stature and my mother's clean-cut features, intellectually I was more son to Hammerfeldt than to any one else. From the day w...

Before my coronation there was no event in childhood that impressed itself on my memory with marked or singular distinction. My father's death, the result of a chill contracted...

present. They had taken my friend from me. In my bed that night I wept for him, and my days seemed empty for the want of him. It was to me as though he had died, and worse than...