He found the King seated at a table, with a map of Franconia spread out before him, into which he was sticking pins with various coloured heads. Maximilian looked up, and smiled pleasantly at his cousin’s entrance.
“Why, Ernest, how is it that you have come in so quietly? Surely there is some one outside?”
“Yes, Karl Fink is there; but I told him to let me pass.” The boy stared strangely at his cousin, and added naïvely, “What are you doing with those pins?”
Maximilian was rather amused by the lad’s coolness.
“Look here, and I will show you,” he said. “You see these pins with red heads; they are to mark all the large towns and villages. The small blue pins show where there are railways running already, and these yellow ones I am using to mark out the routes where I think there ought to be new railways made.”
“But why?”
“Because I have found out that there are a lot of men in my kingdom who have no work to do, and I want to give them a chance of earning their bread, and at the same time benefiting the country at large by giving the farmers better means of sending their produce to the markets. You see, Ernest, a king ought not to spend all his time in enjoying himself, as I have been doing till lately; he ought to study the wants of his people, and care for them.”
The boy regarded him with a puzzled air.
“But is this really true?” he asked doubtfully. “Are these things really for what you say? I thought perhaps they were only things to play with.”
Maximilian laughed.