“Well,” said their owner at length: “will you not answer my question?”
“You ask me, sir, what was peculiarly hard to me, a soldier, in that mere call to obedience? Nothing, I answer. That you could send me into the fight, having first broken my sword in its scabbard—that was the hard thing.”
The prince seemed to ponder a little, sitting without movement, save for a slight corrugation of his brows.
“No, I do not understand,” he said presently. “You would seem to imply that I wilfully dedicated you to destruction.”
“Wilfully, yes. I do not say consciously.”
“Can will be unconscious of itself?”
“In princes, sir, because no one dreams of questioning it in them. There can be no conscious force without conscious resistance.”
The young philosopher considered again, as appraising a plausible theory.
“Very well,” he said. “Then, to return from the abstract to the particular, what is represented in fact by this symbol of the broken sword?”
“My broken honour, sir, for which you were responsible.”