"Your majesty," exclaimed Stein, impetuously, "your majesty, I—"
"Silence," ejaculated the king, in an imperious voice, "silence while I am speaking! I really feel sorry that you have compelled me to speak to you so plainly and unreservedly; but as you are always boasting of being a truthful man, I hare told you my opinion in unvarnished language, and will add that, if you should be unwilling to change your disrespectful conduct, the state cannot count very confidently of profiting further by your services."
"Your majesty, I cannot change my conduct," exclaimed Stein, pale with hidden anger, which he could no longer repress. "As you believe me to be an 'obstinate, refractory, and disobedient servant of the state, who, boastfully relying on his genius and talents, so far from aiming at the welfare of his country, is actuated solely by his whims, his passions, and personal hatred—'"
"Ah," interrupted the king, laughing scornfully, "you have an excellent memory, for I believe you are repeating my own words!"
"Sire, this will show you that my conduct is not always disrespectful, but that I set so high a value on your royal words that they are immediately engraved upon my memory," said Baron von Stein, smiling. "But, inasmuch as I am also of your majesty's opinion that such officials as you have described me to be are most injurious to the interests of the monarchy, I must request your majesty to accept my declination, and I hope it will be granted immediately."
"You have pronounced your own sentence, and I do not know how to add any thing to it!" replied the king.
Baron von Stein bowed. "I thank your majesty most humbly," he said. "Now I must beg that my dismissal from the service be communicated to me in the usual form. I have the honor to take leave of your majesty."
Without waiting for the king's reply, the baron bowed a second time, and left the room with measured steps. He crossed the anteroom rapidly, and then entered the apartment contiguous to the hall. A royal valet de chambre hastened to meet him. "Your excellency," he said, "the queen begs you to be so kind as to go immediately to her. She instructed me to wait here till your return from the king, and ordered me to announce you directly to her majesty."
"Announce me, then," said Baron von Stein, following the footman with a mournful air.
The queen was in her cabinet, and rose from her divan when Baron von Stein entered. She offered her hand to the minister with a smile. "I begged you to come to me," she said, "because I intended to be the first to wish you—nay, ourselves—joy of your new position. The king has informed me that he would intrust the office of Count von Haugwitz to you, and I tell you truly that this is as a beam of light for me in the gloom of our present circumstances. I know that you are a true and faithful patriot; that you have the welfare of Prussia, of Germany, and of our dynasty at heart, and that you have the will and the ability to help us all—this is the reason why I wish ourselves joy of—"