Zenda
Somehow love gives even to a dull man the knowledge of his lover’s heart. I had come to humble myself and pray pardon for my presumption; but what I said now was:
``I love you with all my heart and soul!''
I was made to read this pretty ghastly tale at school. OK, it's not as terrible as one sometimes thinks (tho' its understanding of inheritance of hair colour is pretty slack, even for 1893) and it does make one rather good point. The quoted passage comes when Rassendyll sees Flavia for the first time after she has learnt of the trick that has been played on her. Rassendyll has courted her while pretending to be the King, and she has fallen in love with him, as he with her. She has been deceived and lied to in matters that touch her as closely as can be. It really doesn't get much worse than this. Rassendyll has some explaining to do(!) But actually he doesn't need to explain anything. He tells her the one thing that really really matters. He tells her that he loves her.

There is a tendency to worry too much, on the big occasions, about what one should say. But Rassendyll is right, and there really is nothing to worry about:

If you are serious, you will know what to say.

I have just found a similar piece of business in a Ruth Rendell; i won't tell you which co's i don't want to spoil it for you. Rendell's reworking of this idea is of course much more subtle and humanly plausible — as well as being much darker .. much darker... Actually it quite upset me. (Mere murders i can deal with — i quite like a good murder in fact .... but this is much worse). Ruth Rendell is appallingly wonderful. What a master.
Novels often contain useful circumstantial information. We are never told in so many words in what language the conversations in the book are conducted, but the names are all German, and best bet must be that the language was too. Rassendyll seems to have no difficulty with the ``play-acting'' — as Henzau calls it — and he wouldn't have been able to get away with it had his German not been near-native. Hope Hawkins doesn't seem to think that Rassendyll's fluency in German needs any explanation in 1893. And indeed it doesn't. Both my British grandparents spoke fluent German (and my grandfather was almost the same age as Rassendyll, being in fact two years older). Educated Brits of that generation spoke German.
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