CHAPTER XIV.
PLEASURE TAKES LEAVE TO PROTEST.
During the months that followed the departure of the Sempachs I engaged myself busily in public affairs, in the endeavour to gain better acquaintance with the difficult trade which was mine. I do not throw off impressions lightly, and I was disinclined for gaiety, or for more society than the obligations of my position demanded. My mother approved of my zeal; a convinced partisan, she enjoyed that happy confidence in her own views which makes people certain that everybody can study their opinions only to embrace them. Attention is the sole preliminary to conversion. I will not speak further of this matter here than to say that I was doomed to disappoint Princess Heinrich in this respect. I am glad of it. The world moves, and although it is very difficult for persons so artificially situated as I have been to move with it, yet we can and must move after it, lumbering along in its wake more or less slowly and awkwardly. We hold on this tenure; if we do not perform it—well, we end in country-houses in England.
It was, I suppose, owing to these occupations that I failed to notice the relations between Victoria and her husband until they had reached a rather acute crisis. Either from a desire to re-enforce the number of my guardian angels, or merely because they found
