“Popular? Well, there I would distinguish,” answered Gotthold, leaning back and joining the tips of his fingers. “There are various kinds of popularity: the bookish, which is perfectly impersonal, as unreal as the nightmare; the politician’s, a mixed variety; and yours, which is the most personal of all. Women take to you; footmen adore you; it is as natural to like you as to pat a dog; and were you a saw-miller you would be the most popular citizen in Grünewald. As a prince—well, you are in the wrong trade. It is perhaps philosophical to recognise it as you do.”
“Perhaps philosophical?” repeated Otto.
“Yes, perhaps. I would not be dogmatic,” answered Gotthold.
“Perhaps philosophical, and certainly not virtuous,” Otto resumed.
“Not of a Roman virtue,” chuckled the recluse.
Otto drew his chair nearer to the table, leaned upon it with his elbow, and looked his cousin squarely in the face. “In short,” he asked, “not manly?”
“Well,” Gotthold hesitated, “not manly, if you will.” And then, with a laugh, “I did not know that you gave yourself out to be manly,” he added. “It was one of the points that I inclined to like about you; inclined, I believe, to admire. The names of virtues exercise a charm on most of us; we must lay claim to all of them, however incompatible; we must all be both daring and prudent; we must all vaunt our pride and go to the stake for our humility. Not so you. Without compromise you were yourself: a pretty sight. I have always said it: none so void of all pretence as Otto.”
“Pretence and effort both!” cried Otto. “A dead dog in a canal is more alive. And the question, Gotthold, the question that I have to face is this: Can I not, with effort and self-denial, can I not become a tolerable sovereign?”
“Never,” replied Gotthold. “Dismiss the notion. And besides, dear child, you would not try.”
“Nay, Gotthold, I am not to be put by,” said Otto. “If I am constitutionally unfit to be a sovereign, what am I doing with this money, with this palace, with these guards? And I—a thief—am I to execute the law on others?”