Page:Anthony Hope - The Kings Mirror.djvu/46

 ; but a woman, very pretty and sympathetic, who would be only twenty-eight when I was eighteen, must have seemed to her mind the greatest peril of all. It is one of the drawbacks of conspicuous place that a man's likings and fancies, his merest whims, are invested by others with an importance that throws its reflection back on to his own mind; he is able to recollect only with an effort that even in his case there are a good many things of no importance. I did not make these observations as a small boy at Artenberg, but even as a small boy I knew very well that the Countess von Sempach would not be invited to the Schloss. Nor was she. My mother guarded the gate, a jealous angel.

Thus a pleasant summer passed at Artenberg, and in the autumn we returned to Forstadt. Then I had my procession, though it seemed scarcely as brilliant or interesting as that wherein Victoria had held first place while I looked down, a highly satisfied spectator, from heaven. I was eleven years old now, and perhaps just the first bloom was wearing off the wonder of the world. For recompense, but not in full requital, I was more awake to the meaning of things around me, and I fear much more awake to the importance of myself, Augustin. Now I appropriated the cheers at which before I had marvelled, and approved the enthusiasm that had before amused me. My mother greeted these signs in me; since I was to leave the women she would now have me a man as soon as might be; besides, she had a woman's natural impatience for my full growth. They love us most as babies, when they are Providence to us; least as boys, when we make light of them; more again when as men we return to rule and be ruled, bartering slavery in one matter for