ady to fall in with
your plans. But I am not ready to do so, and am thoroughly indisposed to
accept your proposition."

"You are not inclined to do so?" asked the colonel, shocked. "Not even,"
he continued more softly, "when I tell you that the Electress knows our
plans and consents to them?"

"Not even then, colonel. However much I love my mother, yet in this matter
I can not suffer myself to be guided by her wishes. No, Colonel von
Burgsdorf, I am not minded to go into your plans; for have you well
considered what you require of me? You ask me to head a revolution, to
give you a deed of rebellion, and to call upon the noblemen of the country
to revolt against their rightful Sovereign. You ask me, as a rebel and
agitator, and yet at the same time only as your tool, to do force and
violence to my lord and father, and to force him to dismiss his minister,
to alter his system, and to make enemies of his friends and friends of his
enemies. Truly, you offer me a great advantage in prospective, and are
good enough to propose that I step into Count Schwarzenberg's place and
rule the country in the Elector's name, as he has done. But I am not blind
to my own shortcomings, and do not overestimate myself. I know very well
that I am as yet but an inexperienced young man, who has still a great
deal to learn, and is by no means in a position to take the place of so
distinguished and adroit a statesman as Count Schwarzenberg. I must yet go
to school to him, and learn from him statecraft and policy."

"Will you learn from him, gracious sir?" cried Burgsdorf passionately,
"would you go to school to him, to that Catholic, that Imperialist?"

"Tell me a better schoolmaster for my father's son?" asked the Electoral
Prince softly. "My father has bestowed full confidence upon him for these
twenty years past, he has adhered firmly and faithfully to him in evil as
well as in prosperous days, and therefore I conclude that the count is
worthy of this unshaken confidence, and must well deserve his master's
love. It would, therefore, be very disrespectful behavior on my part
toward my father, and put me in the light of exalting myself against him
in unchildlike disobedience, if I should make the attempt to remove Count
Schwarzenberg from his side by force. The Elector alone is reigning
Sovereign within his own dominions, and what he concludes must be good,
and it does not become us to censure or presume to know better."

"Your grace, then, w