A shadow seemed to fall upon the soldier’s face.
“So speaks the prince,” he said—“generous and fine-minded; but still the prince. Can a prince be slave to love, sir?”
“History would seem to say so.”
“Ah! He may rule everything else, but not that: he cannot rule what, in common with all men, he is subject to. A prince in love is just a man in love. He, too, may suffer the unattainable.”
For some moments the archduke stood silent; then, slightly nodding his head, made answer:
“True, Tiretta—that is quite true. I cannot command love. I might possess, and murder to possess its form: still not to me but to the shadow of the dead would belong all that was worth possessing in it. Have you deserved death? I do not know. I only know I would not have the thing I seek made unattainable; and that would it become, were I to kill you. Yet what to do? Tell me, my friend, for I am in your hands.”
“In mine!”
Emotion, sudden and startled, shook the inflexible voice.
“Tiretta!”
The young prince put a hand, quite movingly and unexpectedly, on his erst-favourite’s shoulder. The action, generous and manly, spoke the real heart under all its philosophic veneer.