"Your confidence gives me pleasure," replied the Professor; "but if your Highness should ever be in the position to seek for an assistant in government, I could not accept this dignity with a good conscience unless your Highness's subjects had all been passed through the bookbinder's press, and wore little coats of pasteboard, and had on their backs labels that told the contents of each."
The Princess laughed, but her eyes rested with deep feeling on the honest countenance of the man. She rose and approached him.
"You are always true, open, and high-minded."
"Thanks for your judgment," replied the Professor, much pleased. "Even your Highness treats me like a spirit that dwells in a book; you praise me as openly as if I did not understand the words that you speak. I beg permission to convey to your Highness my feelings also in a review."
"What I am like, I do not wish to hear from you," exclaimed the Princess; "for you would, in spite of the harmlessness which you boast of, end by reading me as plainly as if I had a morocco-covered back and gilt edges. But I am serious when I praise you. Yes, Mr. Werner, since you have been with us I have attained to a better understanding of the value of life. You do not know what an advantage it is for me to have intercourse with a mind which, undisturbed by the little trifles around it, only serves its high goddess of Truth. The turmoil of daily life bears hard upon us, and perplexes us; those by whom I am surrounded, even the best of them, all think and care about themselves, and make convenient compacts between their feeling of duty and their egotism. But in you I perceive unselfishness and the incessant devotion of yourself to the highest labor of man. There is something great and lofty in this that overpowers me with admiration. I feel the worth of such an existence, like a new light that penetrates my soul. Never have I known any one about me so inspired with heaven in his breast. That is my review of you, Professor Werner; it is, perhaps, not well written, but it comes from my heart."
The eyes of the learned man shone as he looked at the enthusiastic countenance of the princely child, but he was silent. There was a long pause. The Princess turned away, and bent over her books. At last she began, with gentle voice:
"You are going to your daily work, I will do so also. Before you leave me, I beg of you to be my instructor: I have marked a place in the work no art that you had the kindness to bring from the library, which I could not quite understand."
The Professor took the open book from her hand, and laughed.
"This is the theory of quite a different art; it is not the right book."
The Princess read, "How to make blanc-mange." She opened the title page: "Common-sense cook-book of an old Nuremberg cook." She turned the book round with astonishment; it was the same simple binding.