'Now, God forbid!'
Otto, though he was in no very smiling humour, could not forbear to smile. 'Yet I was told last night,' he laughed, 'that with a man like me to impersonate, and a man like you to touch the springs, a very possible government could be composed.'
'Now I wonder in what diseased imagination,' Gotthold said, 'that preposterous monster saw the light of day?'
'It was one of your own trade - a writer: one Roederer,' said Otto.
'Roederer! an ignorant puppy!' cried the librarian.
'You are ungrateful,' said Otto. 'He is one of your professed admirers.'
'Is he?' cried Gotthold, obviously impressed. 'Come, that is a good account of the young man. I must read his stuff again. It is the rather to his credit, as our views are opposite. The east and west are not more opposite. Can I have converted him? But no; the incident belongs to Fairyland.'
'You are not then,' asked the Prince, 'an authoritarian?'
'I? God bless me, no!' said Gotthold. 'I am a red, dear child.'
'That brings me then to my next point, and by a natural transition. If I am so clearly unfitted for my post,' the Prince asked; 'if my friends admit it, if my subjects clamour for my downfall, if revolution is preparing at this hour, must I not go forth to meet the inevitable? should I not save these horrors and be done with these absurdities? in a word, should I not abdicate? O, believe me, I feel the ridicule, the vast abuse of language,' he added, wincing, 'but even a principulus like me cannot resign; he must make a great gesture, and come buskined forth, and abdicate.'
'Ay,' said Gotthold, 'or else stay where he is. What gnat has bitten you to-day? Do you not know that you are touching, with lay hands, the very holiest inwards of philosophy, where madness dwells? Ay, Otto, madness; for in the serene temples of the wise, the inmost shrine, which we carefully keep locked, is full of spiders' webs. All men, all, are fundamentally useless; nature tolerates, she does not need, she does not use them: sterile flowers! All - down to the fellow swinking in a byre, whom fools point out for the exception - all are useless; all weave ropes of sand; or like a child that has breathed on a window, write and obliterate, write and obliterate, idle words! Talk of it no more. That way, I tell you, madness lies.' The speaker rose from his chair and then sat down again. He laughed a little laugh, and then, changing his tone, resumed: 'Yes, dear child, we are not here to do battle with giants; we are here to be happy like the flowers, if we can be. It is because you could, that I have always secretly admired you. Cling to that trade; believe me, it is the right one. Be happy, be idle, be airy. To the devil with all casuistry! and leave the state to Gondremark, as heretofore. He does it well enough, they say; and his vanity enjoys the situation.'
'Gotthold,' cried Otto, 'what is this to me? Useless is not the question; I cannot rest at uselessness; I must be useful or I must be noxious - one or other. I grant you the whole thing, prince and principality alike, is pure absurdity, a stroke of satire; and that a banker or the man who keeps an inn has graver duties. But now, when I have washed my hands of it three years, and left all - labour, responsibility, and honour and enjoyment too, if there be any - to Gondremark and to - Seraphina - ' He hesitated at the name, and Gotthold glanced aside. 'Well,' the Prince continued, 'what has come of it? Taxes, army, cannon - why, it's like a box of lead soldiers! And the people sick at the folly of it, and fired with the injustice! And war, too - I hear of war - war in this teapot! What a complication of absurdity and disgrace! And when the inevitable end arrives - the revolution - who will be to blame in the sight of God, who will be gibbeted in public opinion? I! Prince Puppet!'
'I thought you had despised public opinion,' said Gotthold.
'I did,' said Otto sombrely, 'but now I do not. I am growing old. And then, Gotthold, there is Seraphina.