Clara. The finest thing about you is your kindness. Oh, I am so glad you have come! I could not endure my fears any longer.
The King. There are dissensions going on about you!
The King. Bear up!--It will soon be over.
Clara. I believe it will. Yes, I know it will.--Let me walk about a little! (The KING walks up and down with her.)
The King. And turn our thoughts to something else! Do you know where I have come from?
The King. From our little house in the park.
The King. You will feel only _one_ person's presence there! Wherever you go, you will be surrounded by the thoughts I have had of you there. If you look out of the window, or go out on to the balcony--on every rock, by each turn of the stream--on the lawns, under the trees, among the bushes--everywhere you will find a thousand thoughts of you hidden. Breathe the words "my darling girl," and they will all come clustering round you!--Let us sit down.
The King. And I am the latest fairy prince! (He sits down and draws her on to his knee.) And you are the little maid who comes, led by good fairies, to the enchanted castle to wake him. He has been kept asleep by wicked spells for many, many years.
The King. I am not really _I_, nor you _you_. The monarch was bewitched long ago. He was turned into a wild beast who gave reign to his passion by night and slept by day. And now the maiden of humble degree has become a woman and freed him from the spells.
Clara. Really! Ah, you are so clever at inventing things to cheat my fears away from me. And you always succeed. But after all, you know, I have no strength and no courage; I am so weak.
The King. You have more strength than I!--more than any one I have ever known.
Clara. No, don't say that; but--you may be sure of this!--if I did not feel that I had _some_ strength I would never try to throw in my lot with yours.
The King. I will explain to you what you are! Some people are tremendously more spiritual, more delicately constituted than others; and they are a hundred times more sensitive. And they fancy that is weakness. But it is just they who draw their strength from _deeper_ sources, through a thousand imperceptible channels. You will often find them with heads erect and valiant when others have gone under; they merely bend before the storm, with supple strength, when others break under it. You are like that!