Embracing me and holding me by the hand, he congratulated me with his whole heart.

The desire of his life was accomplished; the thing he had plotted for ages had come to pass.
He praised me infinitely.

My glorious future, he said, was to carry a princess to England and sit among the highest there, the husband of a lady peerless in beauty and in birth, who, in addition to what she was able to do for me by way of elevation in my country, could ennoble in her own territory.

I had the option of being the father of English nobles or of German princes; so forth.

I did not like the strain; yet I clung to him.