The Premier lifted his eyebrows, smiled deprecatingly, and murmuring something about pressure of State affairs, shook hands with Von Glauben, whose countenance, as usual, presented an impenetrable mask to his thoughts.
“It is rather a new experience for me,” continued the Prince, “to be treated as a kind of petitioner on the King’s favour, and kept in attendance,—but no matter!—novelty is always pleasing! I have been cooling my heels here for more than an hour. Von Glauben, too, has been waiting;—contrary to custom, he has not even been permitted to enquire after his Majesty’s health this morning!”
Lutera maintained his former expression of polite surprise, but said nothing. Instinct warned him to be sparing of words lest he should betray his own private anxiety.
The Prince went on carelessly.
“Majesty takes humours like other men, and must, more than other men, I suppose, be humoured! Yet there is to my mind something unnatural in a system which causes several human beings to be dependent on another’s caprice!”
“You will not say so, Sir, when you yourself are King,” observed the Marquis.
“Long distant be the day!” returned the Prince. “Indeed, I hope it may never be! I would rather be the simplest peasant ploughing the fields, and happy in my own way, than suffer the penalties and pains surrounding the possession of a Throne!”
“Only,” put in Von Glauben sententiously, “you would have to take into consideration, Sir, whether the peasant ploughing the fields is happy in his own way. I have made ‘the peasant ploughing the fields’ a special form of study,—and I have always found him a remarkably discontented, often ill-fed—and therefore unhealthy individual.”
“We are all discontented, if it comes to that!” said Prince Humphry with a light laugh,—“Except myself! I am perfectly contented!”
“You have reason to be, Sir,” said Lutera, bowing low.