The argument was not new to William, already he had heard a great deal of such discouragement; but perhaps it had never before been put to him so weightily by so important a personage. He listened with his elbow on the desk and his chin in his hand, his firm, small-featured profile towards the speaker, his eyes cast down.
So plain was he, so modest were his appointments, that even the unimaginative mind of the Landgrave contrasted him with the gorgeous bridegroom who had come to Leipsic for his marriage seven years before.
"Have you not," he exclaimed, "sacrificed enough already? Are you not sufficiently stripped?"
"I am," answered William, "greatly hampered for want of money."
"How much have you on this enterprise?" asked the Landgrave.
"Everything," said the Prince, "all I and my brothers and my friends possess."
"Then you are ruined men!"
"If we fail, yes," admitted William.
"It is not possible that you can succeed."
"It is not possible to turn back," replied the Prince, not arrogantly but rather gently.