park is yours; but the birds that dwell in it, the air, the light, its
beauty, are not yours alone, but are shared with you by all. So long as
the world is ours, in the vulgar sense of the word, we may love it; but
when we have made it our own, in a purer and better sense, no one can
take it from us. The great thing is to be strong and to know that hatred
is death, that love alone is life, and that the amount of love that we
possess is the measure of the life and the divinity that dwells
within us."

Gunther rose and was about to withdraw. He feared lest excessive thought
might over-agitate the Queen, who, however, motioned him to remain. He
sat down again.

"You cannot imagine--" said the Queen after a long pause, "--but that is
one of the cant phrases that we have learned by heart. I mean just the
reverse of what I have said. You can imagine the change that your words
have effected in me."

"I can conceive it."

"Let me ask a few more questions. I believe--nay, I am sure--that on the
height you occupy, and toward which you would fain lead me, there dwells
eternal peace. But it seems so cold and lonely up there. I am oppressed
with a sense of fear, just as if I were in a balloon ascending into a
rarer atmosphere, while more and more ballast was ever being thrown out.
I don't know how to make my meaning clear to you. I don't understand how
to keep up affectionate relations with those about me, and yet regard
them from a distance, as it were,--looking upon their deeds as the mere
action and reaction of natural forces. It seems to me as if, at that
height, every sound and every image must vanish into thin air."