ather?"

"I need it much," replied the Electoral Prince, with low, melancholy
voice. "I need a kind, gracious word from my father, on returning home
after so long an absence; and it would seem to me as if my whole future,
my whole life were under a cloud if I lacked the blessing of your love,
the sunshine of your favor."

"My son knows how to arrange his words prettily," said the Elector,
shrugging his shoulders; "it is very observable that he has become quite a
fine, elegant gentleman; who will find but little to his taste among us,
and who will suit us just as little! But what are those people forever
shouting?" said the Elector, interrupting himself, while he rose
impulsively from his armchair, thus obliging the Prince to rise from his
knees. "What infamous hubbub and howling is this, and what do you villains
want of us?"

"Nothing further, most noble Elector," replied Count Schwarzenberg, to
whom the Elector had turned with his query--"nothing further than that
your honor drive me away, nothing further than that you dismiss the hated
minister, whom they abhor, simply because he is a Catholic and not a
Reformer, and because he is named Schwarzenberg and not Rochow or Quitzow,
nor blessed with some country bumpkin's title."

"I will rout this pack of vagabonds!" cried the Elector. "Let them dare
just once more to let such an opprobrious, insulting shout be heard!"

And, quite forgetting his weakness and his limb so painfully swollen with
gout, the Elector went rapidly to the still open corner window, and,
leaning far out of it, lifted up his hand, commanding quiet. The people
took this inclination of the body, this movement of the hand, for a token
of grace, for a kind salutation on the part of their Sovereign, perhaps
even for a granting of their demand. They roared aloud with delight, waved
aloft their hats and caps, their arms and handkerchiefs, and cried and
whooped and hurrahed: "Long live the Elector! Long live George William!
Long live the Electoral Prince!"

The Elector stepped back and shut the window so violently that the little
panes of glass, framed in lead, fairly rattled.

"Frantic populace!" he growled, "they mix up a wretched salad of cheers
and curses, mingle weeds with their herbs, and fancy that we will find
this devilish compound pleasing to our palates! We shall remember them for
it, and--"

"Most gracious sir!" cried Count Schwarzenberg, with radiant countenance,
approaching the Elector-