"No, sire. I remember it. I know kings should be the unhappiest men in the world while those they govern are so unhappy. In France a prince like you would be miserable, but it is different here where every one is so happy and none are oppressed, or poor, or wicked."
"And do you think that should make me happy, mademoiselle?"
"Yes, sire, I know it must. Had my ancestors handed me down a kingdom like yours, which they had purged of every evil, I should worship them every day."
"And do you think that nothing more is needed—that it is enough to contemplate the happiness of my subjects?"
"Yes, sire, it is the highest happiness."
"Can you not think there may be something else a man may crave for, something still higher?"
"Is there something else?" she said looking up at him sympathetically.
He paused before he answered. He did not like the way she was drawing him immediately to tell her his inmost thoughts; yet it was so pleasant—this strange, sympathetic power of the beautiful woman at his side, who was so frank and unaffected. It was somehow like talking to a man, and yet so widely different. He knew his next reply would place them on closer terms than he had ever been with a woman before. He hesitated, and then took the plunge.
"I will tell you," he said, speaking with an earnestness which surprised him, and which he could not prevent. "That something else which is highest of all is to contemplate happiness, which you have wrought yourself. What is it to me that my people are contented, rich, and unoppressed? It is not my work. I could not even make them otherwise if I tried. It is my ancestors who have done it all. Without a thought for those who were to come after they laid law to law, and ordinance to ordinance, till the whole was perfect. They tore up every weed, they smoothed down every roughness in their unthinking greed of well-doing. They strove unceasing to perfect their own nobility and gave no heed to me. See in what fetters they have bound my soul. All my life I have striven and denied myself that I might grow up a statesman in fact as well as name; that I might be a physician to my people, to detect and cure the most secret maladies that seize on nations, and stretch out my arm in such wide-reaching strokes as men see wondering, and say, 'There is a king of men.' But you are a woman," he said, suddenly dropping his inspired tone to one of no little bitterness, "and cannot understand what it is for a man to feel thus."