“At least,” rejoins SAGACITY, “you secure some reward from the country you have freed; say, the cession of Nice and Savoy; something to satisfy those at home who doubt the market-value of right and truth.”

“No,” is the reply, “you may preach that to Metternich and remain with him.”  And so the Prince worked on; determined that neither fear, nor treachery, nor much less blundering, on his part, should imperil the precarious balance of the world’s life.

Once more, and for the last time, SAGACITY lifts up her voice.  “You were the fittest man to rule.  Give solidity to your life’s work by leaving a fit successor to carry it on.  Secure yourself this successor in a son.  The world is open to you for the choice of your bride.”

And again the ideal Prince retorts on the suggestion.  “The fit successor is not secured in this way.  All experience proves it.  The spark of genius is dropped where God will.  It may find hereditary (hence accumulated) faculties ready to be ignited.  It may fire the barren rock.”  And, changing the metaphor,

                             “...  The seed o’ the apple-tree
       Brings forth another tree which bears a crab: 
       ’Tis the great gardener grafts the excellence
       On wildings where he will.” (p. 203.)

He ends by calling up the vision of an Italian wayside temple, in which, as the legend declares, succession was carried on after a very different principle.  Each successive high priest has become so by murdering his predecessor, his qualification being found in that simple fact; or in the qualities of cunning or courage of which it has been the test.[56]

And now the dream is lived through, and Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau awakens in his own palace:  not much better pleased with his own plain speaking than with the imaginary heroics of Messrs. Hugo and Thiers.  “One’s case is so much stronger before it is put into words.  Motives which seem sufficient in the semi-darkness of one’s own consciousness, are so feeble in the light of day.  When we reason with ourselves, we subordinate outward claims without appearing to do so:  since the necessity of making the best of life for our own sake supplies unconsciously to ourselves the point of view from which all our reasonings proceed.  When forced to think aloud, we stoop to what is probably an untruth.  We say that our motives were—­what they should have been; what perhaps we have fancied them to be.”

These closing pages convey the author’s comment on Prince Hohenstiel’s defence.  They present it, in his well-known manner, as what such a man might be tempted to say; rather than what this particular man was justified in saying.  But he takes the Prince’s part in the lines beginning,

                               “Alack, one lies oneself
       Even in the stating that one’s end was truth,” (p. 209.)

for they farther declare that though we aim at truth, our words cannot always be trusted to hit it.  The best cannon ever rifled will sometimes deflect.  Words do this also.  We recognize the conviction of the inadequacy of language which was so forcibly expressed in the Pope’s soliloquy in “The Ring and the Book,” but in what seems a more defined form.