But the Prince came to his aid. He was looking across at the Count with a sort of lazy dislike; as one looks at a stuffed reptile or at a foul but caged bird.
"Thou art soon put down, little one," he said, with his kindly, lofty air. "Tell him all this is nothing to thee! That disease and distraction never created anything. That nothing lives without a germ of life. Tell the Count that thou art not careful to answer him—that it may be as he says. Tell him that even were it so—that He of whom he speaks died broken-hearted in that despairing cry to the Father who He thought had deserted Him—tell the Count thou art still with Him! Tell him that if His mission was misconceived and perverted, it was because His spirit and method was Divine! Tell the Count that in spite of failure and despair, nay, perchance—who knows?—because even of that despair, He has drawn all men to Him from that cross of His as He said. Tell the Count that He has ascended to His Father and to thy Father, and, alone among the personalities of the world's story, sits at the right hand of God! Tell him this, he will have nothing to reply."
And, as if to render reply impossible, the Prince rose and, calling to his spaniel, who came at his gesture from the sunshine in the window, he struck a small Indian gong upon the table, and the pages drawing back the curtains of the antechamber, he left the room.
The Count looked at the boy with a smile. Mark's face was flushed, his eyes sparkling and full of tears.
"Well, Herr Tutor," said the Count not unkindly, "dost thou say all that?"
"Yes," said the boy, "God helping me, I say all that!"
"Thou might'st do worse, Tutor," said the Count, "than follow the Prince."