ut what of the
nurses? How little benevolent or noble-hearted soever they be, nurses
are bound by the honour of their profession and by personal pride not to
forsake their patients. In one passage of _Majesty_ the crown-prince is
shaken by fundamental doubts of his own inherited right to rule; he
questions and analyses until he is brought to heel by his imperial
father who remembers that an excess of "victorious analysis" rotted the
intellectual foundations of the old order and prepared the way for the
logical French revolution. In another passage the boy realizes without
any qualification that he at least is unfitted for the burthen of empire
and that it is better to abdicate in favour of his brother or to commit
suicide than to play Atlas with a world that he cannot sustain; once
more, his imperial father silences any admission that his own flesh and
blood can be too degenerate for the task of majesty. And so, at the
moral sword-point, this hereditary nurse is held to the duty and
privilege of standing by an hereditary patient whom he cannot relieve
with "the most healing lint" and who may at any moment throw him out of
window.

Not even in thought may majesty abdicate: a prince inherits his
philosophy as he inherits his title.

_"Life is so simple,"_ proclaims the collectivist Zanti.

_"'As you picture it, but not in reality,' objected Herman._

_"Zanti looked at him angrily, stopped still, to be able to talk with
greater ease, and, passionately, violently, exclaimed:_

_"'And do you in reality find it better than I picture it? I do not,
sir, and I hope to turn my picture into reality. You and yours once,
ages ago, made your picture reality; now it is the turn of us others:
your reality has lasted long enough....'_

_"Othomar, haughtily, tried to say something in contradiction; the old
man, however, suddenly turned to him and, gently though roughly, with
his penetrating, fanatical voice which made Othomar shudder:_

_"'For you, sir, I feel pity!... Do you know why? Because the time will
come!... The hour will come. Perhaps it is very near. If it does not
come in your father's reign, it will come in your reign or your son's.
But come it will! And therefore I feel pity for you. For you will not
have enough love for your people. Not enough love to say to them, "I am
as all of you and nothing more. I will possess no more than any of you,
for I do not want abundance while you suffer need. I will not rule over
you,