If the King
only knew that she is learning French secretly, and can almost write a
polite little note already--! I hear her coming.

SCENE II

PRINCESS WILHELMINE _comes in, carrying a letter_.

WILHELMINE (_timidly_).

Can any one hear us?

SONNSFELD.

Not unless the walls have ears. Is the letter written?

WILHELMINE.

I hardly dare send it, dear Sonnsfeld. I know there are a hundred
mistakes in it.

SONNSFELD.

A hundred? Then the letter must be much longer than Your Highness first
planned it.

WILHELMINE.

I wrote that I fully appreciate the value of the services offered me,
but that my position forces me to refuse any aid to my education which
cannot be attained at least by the help of my mother, the Queen.

SONNSFELD.

Is that what you have written? And made a hundred mistakes? In that case
we are just where we were before. I appreciate that an eighteen-year-old
Princess has to consider history, posterity and so forth--but this
conscientiousness will be your ruin. The King will continue to make a
slave of you, the Queen to treat you as a child. You are the victim of
the conflict between two characters who both perhaps desire what is best
for you, but who are so totally different that you will never know whom
or which one to please. The Crown Prince has made himself free--and how
did he do it? Only by courage and independence. He tore himself loose
from the oppressive bondage imposed on him by the caprice of others, and
won the means to complete his education. And now he sends to you from
Rheinsberg his friend, the Prince Hereditary of Baireuth, to be a
support and protection to you and to the Queen--so that here in this
Court where they drum, trumpet, and parade all day long, you may not
finally, in your despair, seize a musket yourself and join the Potsdam
Guards!

WILHELMINE.

You have a sense of humor, my dear Sonnsfeld. It is all well enough for
my brother to make plans and send out emissaries, when he is safe in
Rheinsberg. He knows that the path to the freedom he has won led past
the very foot of the scaffold. I am of the sex whose duty it is to be
patient. My father is so good at heart, gentler possibly, in his true
self, than is my mother. She indeed, absorbed in her political
ambitions, often turns from me with a harshness that accords ill with
mother-love. It is my fate to endure this life. Ask yourself, dear
friend, how could I trust to a chance adventurous stranger whom my