I must not be misunderstood: my heart is still sore for the loss of him.

But we saved the queen's fair fame, and to Rudolf himself the fatal stroke came as a relief from a choice too difficult: on the one side lay what impaired his own honor, on the other what threatened hers.

As I think on this my anger at his death is less, though my grief cannot be.

To this day I know not how he chose; no, and I don't know how he should have chosen.

Yet he had chosen, for his face was calm and clear.
Come, I have thought so much of him that I will go now and stand before his monument, taking with me my last-born son, a little lad of ten.
He is not too young to desire to serve the queen, and not too young to learn to love and reverence him who sleeps there in the vault and was in his life the noblest gentleman I have known.
I will take the boy with me and tell him what I may of brave King Rudolf, how he fought and how he loved, and how he held the queen's honor and his own above all things in this world.