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Nevertheless, following the way of the world, Libussa seemed very near to have forgotten the furtherers of her good fortune; since, when an obelisk once stands upright, we think no more of the levers and instruments that raised it–at least so did the candidates for her heart interpret the lady’s coldness. Both, however, were wrong; the noble sovereign was neither insensible nor ungrateful; but her heart was no more so completely in her power, that she could do with it whatever she pleased. Love had already decided in favour of the slim hunter. The first impression which the sight of him had made on her heart was still so strong, that no second one could efface it. Three years had passed, and the colours of imagination with which the graceful youth had been sketched, were neither rubbed out, nor had they become faint, and thus her love was proved to be perfect. For the love of the fair sex is of such a nature and quality, that if it will stand the test of three moons, it will generally last three times three, and longer, according to the evidence and example of our own times. When the heroic sons of Germany swam over distant seas, to fight out the domestic squabble of the wilful daughter of Britannia with her mother country, they tore themselves from the arms of their fair ones, with mutual protestations of truth and fidelity; but before they had passed the last buoy of the Weser, the greater part of them were forgotten by their Chloes. The fickle damsels, tired of having their hearts unoccupied, filled up the gap with new intrigues; but the faithful ones, who had had constancy enough to endure the Weser ordeal, and who, when the owners of their hearts were on the other side of the black buoy, had been guilty of no infidelity–these, they say, have kept their vow inviolate, until the return of their heroes into their German father-land, and now merit from the hands of love the reward of their constancy.

It was therefore less remarkable, that, under the circumstances, the Lady Libussa could refuse the hand of the blooming knights who solicited her heart, than that the fair Queen of Ithaca let a whole host of suitors sigh after her in vain, while her heart had only the grey-bearded Ulysses in reserve. Nevertheless, rank and high birth so very much overbalanced the attachment the lady felt for the beloved of her heart, that any thing more than a Platonic passion–that empty shade, which neither warms nor nourishes–was not to be hoped. Although, in those remote times, people cared as little about writing out genealogies, according to parchment and pedigree, as they did about arranging classes of beetles according to their wings and feelers, or flowers according to their stamens, pistils, calyx, and nectary, they knew, nevertheless, that the delicious grape alone associates with the stately elm, and not the weed that creeps along the hedge. A mesalliance caused by a difference of rank an inch wide, did not then, certainly, excite so much pedantic noise as in our classic days; but, however, a difference a yard wide, especially if rivals stood in the interval, and perceived the distance of the two ends, was observable enough. All this, and more than this, the lady maturely weighed in her prudent mind, and therefore she did not give a hearing to the deceitful prattler, passion, loud as it might speak to the advantage of the youth, who was favoured by love. As a chaste vestal, she made an irrevocable vow that she would keep her heart locked up in virgin secresy for the period of her life, and that she would not answer any address of her suitors, either with her eyes or with her gestures; with the reserve, however, that she might platonise as much as she pleased, by way of compensation. This monastic system pleased the two aspirants so little, that they did not know what to make of the killing coldness of their sovereign; jealousy, the companion of love, whispered into their ear; one thought the other was his rival, and their spirit of observation was unwearying, in trying to make discoveries, which both of them dreaded. But the Lady Libussa, with prudence and acuteness, weighed out her scanty favours to the two honourable knights with such an equal balance, that neither scale kicked the beam.