although her thoughts often dwelt longingly on her native mountains, her
own child and mother and husband. How they would miss her! She knew her
Hanseï was a good man at heart, but not particularly shrewd, and easily
gulled or led astray.

Meanwhile, her high spirits, her artless bluntness, the quaint
superstitions of the mountain child, gained her the goodwill and
approval of the king and queen, of Dr. Gunther, the court physician, of
the whole royal household, and, above all, of the lady-in-waiting,
Countess Irma Wildenort.


_II.--The Love Affairs of a King_


Countess Irma's letters to Emmy, her only convent friend, contained
little of idle gossip and of things that had happened. They had no
continuity. They were introspective, and took the form of a diary taken
up at odd moments and left again to be continued, sometimes the
following day, sometimes after a week. They revealed intellectual
development far in advance of her years, and clear perception of
character.

"The queen lives in an exclusive world of sentiment and would like to
raise everybody to her exalted mood--liana-like, in the morning-glow and
evening-glow of sentiment, never in white daylight. She is most gracious
towards me, but we feel it instinctively--there is something in her and
in me that does not harmonise....

"Here all of them think me boundlessly naïve, because I have the courage