ing with him. One day he complained of the desolation and monotony
of his life and asked, in a tone between jest and earnest, what he
should do with himself.

"Give your life a purpose, Prince," replied Dr. Backer, "strive for
something."

Prince Louis smiled scornfully.

"For what shall I strive? Everything to which the rest of you aspire,
which you are struggling with your best powers to attain, I already
possess! Money? I cannot spend half my income unless I light my
cigars with hundred-thaler notes, or wish to bore a hole through the
earth. Women's favour? My visiting cards will obtain more than is
desirable for me. Honours? At six and twenty years old, I have the
grand cross of the highest orders, and have the precedence of every one
except a few princes of the blood. Power? Listen, my dear Doctor: I
really believe that if it suited my pleasure I could shoot a slater off
the roof, and the affair would have no unpleasant results. Fame and
immortality? My name is perhaps somewhat better known than Goethe's.
Wherever I desire to appear, I am far more of a lion than the greatest
poet and scholar, and every Prince Hochstein is sure of two lines in
the encyclopaedia and larger historical works, even if he has done
nothing except to be born and to die at a reasonable age. So, for what
should I strive?"

"For satisfaction with yourself," replied Dr. Backer, "and that you
will find only when you earn what you inherited from your ancestors, in
order to possess it, as Father Goethe says."

Satisfaction with himself--certainly! But to attain it is the greatest
art of life. The prince might gain it if he devoted himself earnestly,
not merely in a half-absent dilettante fashion, to some art, science,
or useful avocation. Only it required a self-discipline of which,
unfortunately, he was incapable. In all pursuits requiring dexterity,
all sciences, the first steps are laborious, wearisome, and apparently
thankless, and the Canaan which they promise is reached only after
weary wandering through the desert. Prince Louis did not possess the
self-denial requisite for it. So he continued his life devoted to
purely external things and meanwhile was as much bored as Jonah in the
whale. He undertook long journeys and disappeared for six months,
during which he hunted tigers in India and hippopotami in the Blue
Nile. When he returned home and was questioned at the club about his
experiences and whether he had be