“Then you seriously suggest that his Majesty—that Maximilian—has passed through something like a religious conversion, which has led him, or will lead him to throw in his lot with the Socialists?”
“It is surely one explanation.”
“It is a very strange one.”
“Is anything too strange to believe of a prince of the line of Astolf?”
This bitter remark seemed completely to bewilder the King’s fellow-prisoner. He stared at Maximilian strangely, and sank his voice almost to a whisper as he put the next question.
“Pardon me if I hardly know how to take your words. Of course I know the hereditary tendencies of the royal house; but do you suggest that there may be some connection between those sad tendencies and this new attitude of the King towards our party?”
Maximilian had grown paler, but he preserved the composure of his voice, as he replied—
“I have always understood that scientists traced a sort of connection between religious enthusiasm and actual mania. Where are we to draw the line between sanity and insanity? What do you say yourself? Are not all men insane on some point? And if the great multitude remain in a condition of dull stupidity all their lives, and perish under the weight of their own incapacity, are they, therefore, more sane than the man whose excess of mental activity sometimes leads him into acts of extravagance?”
The other seemed to listen appreciatively to this reasoning. But at its close he shook his head.
“No doubt you are right in the main. No doubt in many cases the line may be a difficult one to draw. But there are other cases in which madness is as clearly marked a disease as cancer or small-pox. And this is especially so where the disease is proved to be hereditary in a family.”