rieves me, Herr von Leuchtmar, to be forced to remind you that the time
for my education is past, for I am not sixteen years old, but already
several weeks advanced in my eighteenth year."

"I thank your highness for this admonition," replied the baron quietly,
"and I confess that without it I should not have known that your education
was finished."

"Sir, you insult me! So you still regard me as nothing but a boy?"

"No, your highness, as a man, and I believe that Socrates was right when
he said, 'The education of man begins in the cradle and ends only in the
grave.'"

"You know very well that he meant it in a widely different sense. Our talk
is not now of actual education, but of the relations of pupil and teacher.
The time of my pupilage is past, Sir Baron, and you will bear in mind, I
beg, that I no longer sit in the schoolroom."

"That, again, I did not know," said Leuchtmar gently, "and again in my
defense I cite the wise Socrates, who said, 'Man is learning his whole
life long, to confess at last that the only certain knowledge he has
attained is that he knows nothing.'"

"Maxims and maxims forever!" cried the Prince impatiently. "You want to
evade me--you purposely misunderstand me. Well, then, candidly speaking, I
am sick and tired of being everlastingly found fault with, watched over,
tutored and spied upon, and once for all I beg that a stop be put to all
this."

"Will your highness do me the favor to say who it is that finds fault
with, watches over, tutors, and spies upon you?"

"Why, yes--you, Baron Kalkhun von Leuchtmar, you and the private secretary
Mueller, you two first and foremost do those very things."

"Your highness, if we have allowed ourselves to find fault with you when
you did not deserve it, it was very presumptuous; if we have watched over
you and tutored you, surely that might be forgiven in former tutors and
instructors; but if we have acted as spies upon you, then have we both
degraded ourselves and become contemptible, and your highness may esteem
it as my last tutoring if I advise you to remove so unworthy a couple of
subjects forever from your presence."

"You will lead me _ad absurdum_, Leuchtmar!" cried the Prince. "You would
prove to me that I am wrong and accuse you falsely. But you are mistaken,
sir; I only speak the truth. One thing I ask you, though: have you ever
looked upon me as an ungrateful pupil, a disobedient scholar, an
ill-natured, idle man?"

"No, never,"