William put his hand to his brow as if he made a mechanical movement to ease a constant pain there.
“What do you wish me to do?” he asked quietly.
M. de Witt answered at once—
“I want you to disown this party—they may act without your sanction, they cannot act in face of your disapproval—I want you as an ally, as a friend——”
“I am powerless as either, Mynheer,” returned the Prince; “and,” he suddenly turned his wonderful eyes on the Grand Pensionary, “since you designate these you speak of as my friends, to what in me do you appeal to act against them?”
There was a flash of imperiousness in his tone new to M. de Witt. It was almost the manner of a king to a subject; it gave the Grand Pensionary the bewildered sense that he, with twenty years’ experience of affairs and the management of men, was not equal to this boy whom he had seen grow up, whom he had himself educated.
“I appeal to you as a citizen of the Republic,” he said. “I have not brought you up to put yourself before your country—” he hesitated a moment before continuing, “I have always thought you of too great a nature to prefer the phantom of personal aggrandisement to the good of the Commonwealth——”
It seemed as if, on an impulse, William was about to speak, but he checked himself, and M. de Witt went on—
“Will you let yourself, Highness, be used to stir up faction in the State?—will you be an instrument in the hands of ambitious place-seekers?”
“I cannot help my birth, Mynheer,” answered the Prince, “nor prevent the people from using my name.”