There'll be a misfortune, surely!
PRINCE.
But even here, where he might have reposed on a couch of roses, this unfortunate sovereign made for himself a bed of thorns. His son's unhappy history is so well known that I can pass over it in silence….
KING.
In silence—?
PRINCE.
Friedrich Wilhelm could not understand the freedom of the human will. He would have grafted stem to stem, son on father, youth on age. In planning to bestow the hand of his charming daughter, now here, now there, it never came to his mind that her heart might have a right to choose—it never occurred to him to ask: "Does my choice make you happy, child?"
KING.
Eversmann, take this pipe.