"documents" to demonstrate the depth of her affection. And now she
wanted to give the supreme proof by renouncing her Lutheran faith to
enter into a yet closer union with her Catholic husband. To the king
this sacrifice seemed not only sentimentally weak, but politically
unwise. He received the confidence coldly, and begged her to reconsider
the matter. He sent Dr. Gunther, who, in spite of his democratic
tendencies, was held in high esteem by the king, and had great influence
over the queen, to exercise his persuasive powers--with no result.

Where wisdom and experience had failed, the voice of Nature, speaking
out of Walpurga's childish chatter, succeeded. Walpurga told the queen
of her father--how one day on the lake, on hearing the choral singing of
the peasants, he had said: "Now I know how the Almighty feels up there
in Heaven! All the Churches, ours, and the Lutheran, and the Jewish, and
the Turkish, they are all voices in the song. Each sings as he knows,
and yet it sounds well together up there." The queen was radiant next
day, when she informed her spouse that she had the courage of her own
inconsistency and that she had resolved to do his will. The sacrifice
was received with coolness. Was it that her noble act was construed as
further evidence of weakness?

The king had left town for some distant watering-place, and had
requested Irma to write to him at times. Knowing her love of flowers, he
had given orders for a fresh bouquet to be placed every day in her room,
and, perhaps to conceal the favour, in the rooms of two other ladies of
the court. Irma considered both the thought and the expedient unworthy
of her hero, and resolved not to write to him. She spent much of her
time at the studio of a professor of the academy, who not only modelled
a bust of her for a figure of Victory to be placed on the new arsenal,
but gave her instruction in his art. In spite of this new occupation,