For
three years the Princess Flavia had been queen. I am come by now
to the age when a man should look out on life with an eye
undimmed by the mists of passion. My love-making days are over;
yet there is nothing for which I am more thankful to Almighty God
than the gift of my wife's love. In storm it has been my anchor,
and in clear skies my star. But we common folk are free to follow
our hearts; am I an old fool for saying that he is a fool who
follows anything else? Our liberty is not for princes. We need
wait for no future world to balance the luck of men; even here
there is an equipoise. From the highly placed a price is exacted
for their state, their wealth, and their honors, as heavy as
these are great; to the poor, what is to us mean and of no
sweetness may appear decked in the robes of pleasure and delight.
Well, if it were not so, who could sleep at nights? The burden
laid on Queen Flavia I knew, and know, so well as a man can know
it. I think it needs a woman to know it fully; for even now my
wife's eyes fill with tears when we speak of it. Yet she bore it,
and if she failed in anything, I wonder that it was in so little.
For it was not only that she had never loved the king and had
loved another with all her heart.
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