too, what would my feelings be?" He became restless and silent, and
distrusted even his best friends. "Answer me, my friend," he said to his
confidant, Count Prokesch-Osten, "answer me this question,--which is one
of great importance to me just now: What do people think of me? Do
they see in me any justification for the caricatures which are forever
presenting me as a creature of the feeblest intelligence?" Count
Prokesch answered him: "Don't worry. Don't you appear in public every
day? Can even the most ignorant see you and place the slightest
confidence in such fables, which are invented by charlatans without the
least care for truth?" But the young Duke was not consoled, and every
day he lost confidence in his future. Once Count Prokesch-Osten found
him meditating upon his father's will. "The fourth paragraph of the
first article," he said, "contains the guiding principle of my life.
There my father bids me not to forget that I was born a French prince."
And we may be sure that he never forgot it; and if he was so uneasy, if
he suffered keenly, and grief drove him with startling rapidity to the
tomb, it was because he felt that fate condemned him to live and die an
Austrian prince.

His overwrought mind and body soon made him ill. He sought by violent
emotions and excessive fatigue to escape from the thoughts which were
persecuting him like spectres, and driving him to his death. In vain the
physicians commanded rest and quiet. When attacked by an incurable
lung trouble, he required absolute repose: but repose was torture; he
preferred death as a deliverance. Dr. Malfatti, who took the keenest
interest in him, and who was much disturbed by his many imprudences,
entreated him not to throw away wantonly a life which might be so well
and usefully employed. "It is a great pity, sir, that Your Highness," he
said, "can't change bodies as you change horses, when they are tired. I
beg of you to notice that you have a soul of steel in a crystal body,