Limbo and Other Essays Part 14

And you are satisfied? O beautiful Princess, you are of ill.u.s.trious lineage and mind, and learned. Your father brought you up on Plutarch instead of Amadis; you know many things; but there is one, methinks, no one can know the nature of it until he has it.

PRINCESS

What is that, pray?

DIEGO

A heart. Because you have not got one yet, you make your plans without it,--a negligible item in your life.

Princess

I am not a child.

DIEGO

But not yet a woman.

PRINCESS (_meditatively_)

You think, then----

DIEGO

I do not _think_; I _know_. And _you_ will know, some day. And then----

PRINCESS

Then I shall suffer. Why, we must all suffer. Say that, having a heart, a heart for husband or child, means certain grief,--well, does not riding, walking down your stairs, mean the chance of broken bones? Does not living mean old age, disease, possible blindness or paralysis, and quite inevitable aches? If, as you say, I must needs grow a heart, and if a heart must needs give agony, why, I shall live through heartbreak as through pain in any other limb.

DIEGO

Yes,--were your heart a limb like all the rest,--but 'tis the very centre and fountain of all life.

PRINCESS

You think so? 'Tis, methinks, pushing a.n.a.logy too far, and metaphor.

This necessary organ, diffusing life throughout us, and, as physicians say, removing with its vigorous floods all that has ceased to live, replacing it with new and living tissue,--this great literal heart cannot be the seat of only one small pa.s.sion.

DIEGO

Yet I have known more women than one die of that small pa.s.sion's frustrating.

PRINCESS

But you have known also, I reckon, many a man in whom life, what he had to live for, was stronger than all love. They say the Duke my cousin's melancholy sickness was due to love which he had outlived.

DIEGO They say so, Madam.

PRINCESS (_thoughtfully_)

I think it possible, from what I know of him. He was much with my father when a lad; and I, a child, would listen to their converse, not understanding its items, but seeming to understand the general drift. My father often said my cousin was romantic, favoured overmuch his tender mother, and would suffer greatly, learning to live for valour and for wisdom.

DIEGO

Think you he has, Madam?

PRINCESS

If 'tis true that occasion has already come.

DIEGO

And--if that occasion came, for the first time or for the second, perhaps, after your marriage? What would you do, Madam?

PRINCESS

I cannot tell as yet. Help him, I trust, when help could come, by the sympathy of a soul's strength and serenity. Stand aside, most likely, waiting to be wanted. Or else----

DIEGO

Or else, ill.u.s.trious maiden?

PRINCESS

Or else----I know not----perhaps, growing a heart, get some use from it.

DIEGO

Your Highness surely does not mean use it to love with?

PRINCESS

Why not? It might be one way of help. And if I saw him struggling with grief, seeking to live the life and think the thought fit for his station; why, methinks I could love him. He seems lovable. Only love could have taught fidelity like yours.

DIEGO

You forget, gracious Princess, that you attributed great power of virtue to a habit of conduct, which is like the nature of high-bred horses, needing no spur. But in truth you are right. I am no high-bred creature.

Quite the contrary. Like curs, I love; love, and only love. For curs are known to love their masters.

PRINCESS

Speak not thus, virtuous Diego. I have indeed talked in magnanimous fashion, and believed, sincerely, that I felt high resolves. But you have acted, lived, and done magnanimously. What you have been and are to the Duke is better schooling for me than all the Lives of Plutarch.

DIEGO.

You could not learn from me, Lady.

PRINCESS