days with her. And when I had wasted two days the Duke of Strelsau arranged a hunting party.
The stroke was near now. For Sapt and I, after anxious consultations, had resolved that we must risk a blow; our resolution being clinched by Johann's news that the king grew peaked, pale, and ill, and that his health was breaking down under his rigorous confinement. Now a man—be he king or no king—may as well die swiftly, and, as becomes a gentleman, from bullet or thrust, as rot his life out in a cellar! That thought made prompt action advisable in the interests of the king; from my own point of view it grew more and more necessary. For Strakencz urged on me the need of a speedy marriage, and my own inclinations seconded him with such terrible insistence that I feared for my resolution. I do not believe that I should have done the deed I dreamt of; but I might have come to flight, and my flight would have ruined the cause. And—yes, I am no saint (ask my little sister-in-law)—and worse still might have happened. It is perhaps as strange a thing as has ever been in the history of a country that the king's brother
