conspicuously tragic is _Agnes Bernauer_. Agnes is the daughter of a
barber and surgeon, and is so beautiful that she is commonly known as
the angel of Augsburg. Albrecht, the son and sole heir of the reigning
duke Ernst, comes to Augsburg, falls in love with her, and, in spite of
friendly warning, marries her; for she has loved him at first sight,
too. As persons, they do what is right for them to do; their marriage
has been performed by a priest of the church; and they feel that it has
divine sanction. But Albrecht is not an ordinary person; he is the heir
to the throne, and public exigencies require that the succession shall
be guaranteed. This marriage, however, is illegal--a board of
incorruptible judges so finds it; it causes sedition and threatens
interminable strife. Duke Ernst is deliberate and patient in dealing
with the unprecedented case. He waits until he can wait no longer.
Albrecht will not give up Agnes, nor Agnes give up him; Ernst respects
the sacrament of wedlock by which they are united, and only after two
and a half years does he sign the warrant by which Agnes was duly
condemned to death. Agnes dies in perfect innocence and constancy, a
victim of social convention. But Albrecht, whose disregard of this
convention was rebellion, and whose vengeance for his wife's death
brings him to the point of parricide, is made to see, not merely because
excommunication accompanies the ban of the empire on him as a rebel, but
also because of the instructive words and actions of his father, that
the social organization he has defied has itself a divine sanction, and
that a prince, standing by common consent at the head of that
organization, cannot with impunity undermine the basis of his
sovereignty. Devotion to him is like loyalty to the national ensign. The
ensign is nothing in itself, but it symbolizes the idea of the State;
and the prince is also the representative of an idea, which he must
continue to represent in its entirety, or he ceases to be the prince.
This lesson Albrecht learns when, like Kleist's _Prince of Homburg_, he