Your lot is an exceedingly enviable one, my friend!
You need not frown,--I am old enough--and let us hope wise enough--to
guess your secret--to admire it from a purely philosophic point of
view--and to respect it!"
Sir Roger held his peace.
"But," continued the Professor, "His Majesty is not the manner of man
who would consent to subsist, like you, on an idle phantasy. If he
loves--he must possess; it is the regal way!"
"He will never succeed in the direction _you_ mean!" said Sir
Roger emphatically.
"Never!" agreed Von Glauben with a profound shake of his head; "Strange
as it may seem, his case is quite as hopeless as yours!"
The door opened and closed abruptly,--and there followed silence. Von
Glauben looked up to find himself alone. He smiled tolerantly.
"Poor Roger!" he murmured; "He lives the life of a martyr by choice!
Some men do--and like it! They need not do it;--there is not the least
necessity in the world for their deliberately sticking a knife into
their hearts and walking about with it in a kind of idiot rapture. It
must hurt;--but they seem to enjoy it! Just as some women become nuns,
and flagellate themselves,--and then when they are writhing from their
own self-inflicted stripes, they dream they are the 'brides of Christ,'
entirely forgetting the extremely irreligious fact that to have so many
'brides' the good Christ Himself might possibly be troubled, and would
surely occupy an inconvenient position, even in Heaven! Each man,--each
woman,--makes for himself or herself a little groove or pet sorrow, in
which to trot round and round and bemoan life; the secret of the whole
bemoaning being that he or she cannot have precisely the thing he or
she wants.
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