Kings have their policies and wars wherewith to drug each human
appetite. But their consorts are denied these makeshifts; and love may
rationally be defined as the pivot of each normal woman's life, and in
consequence as the arbiter of that ensuing life which is eternal.
Because--as anciently Propertius demanded, though not, to speak the
truth, of any woman--
Quo fugis? ah demens! nulla est fuga, tu licet usque
Ad Tanaim fugias, usque sequetur amor.
And a dairymaid, let us say, may love whom she will, and nobody else be
a penny the worse for her mistaking of the preferable nail whereon to
hang her affections; whereas with a queen this choice is more
portentous. She plays the game of life upon a loftier table, ruthlessly
illuminated, she stakes by her least movement a tall pile of counters,
some of which are, of necessity, the lives and happiness of persons whom
she knows not, unless it be by vague report. Grandeur sells itself at
this hard price, and at no other. A queen must always play, in fine, as
the vicar of destiny, free to choose but very certainly compelled in the
ensuing action to justify that choice: as is strikingly manifested by
the authentic histories of Brunhalt, and of Guenevere, and of swart
Cleopatra, and of many others that were born to the barbaric queenhoods
of extinct and dusty times.
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