"Allow me first, your majesty, to offer you my most hearty congratulations on the successful termination of the war. Here, on the very spot," said Schneider, with emotion, "where I stood last time--that day when your majesty regarded the future so anxiously, and found yourself so completely without allies,--your majesty has again experienced that the King of Prussia is not weak when he stands alone!"
"If he has those two Allies who gave us our device," said the king, with a calm smile, "God and the Fatherland!"
He was silent for a moment. Schneider opened his portfolio.
"Well, what have you in the newspapers?" asked the king.
"Nothing, your majesty, but variations upon one theme--joy at our victories, gratitude to our royal conqueror, his soldiers, and his ministers. The whole press is one great dithyrambus, expressing its emotions now majestically, now pathetically, now comically. But good advice to Prussia and the North-German Confederacy is not wanting. It is incredible how much didactic writing is produced on the future well-being of Germany. Would your majesty like an example?"
The king was silent, and looked thoughtfully before him.
"Schneider," he said, "how ungrateful men are!"
Schneider gazed at the king in amazement.
"Your majesty," he cried, "I cannot, alas! deny that ingratitude is a characteristic of the human race; but I thought the present time was really an exception, everyone is so anxious to express gratitude to your majesty, to the generals."
"It is just at the present time," said the king gravely, "that I think the world, and Berlin especially, so very ungrateful. They thank me, in the most exaggerated words, my Fritz too, all my generals; but One Man they forget, and yet that man had a great share in the success that God has given us."