Max was very happy.  He had never before known a playmate.  But here in Basel the good Franz and his frau, Yolanda, Twonette, fat old Castleman, and myself were all boys and girls together, snatching the joys of life fresh from the soil of mother earth, close to which we lived in rustic simplicity.

Since we had left Styria, our life, with all its hardships, had been a delight to Max, but it was also a series of constantly repeated shocks.  If the shocks came too rapidly and too hard, he solaced his bruised dignity with the thought that those who were unduly familiar with him did not know that he was the heir of the House of Hapsburg.  So day by day he grew to enjoy the nestling comfort of a near-by friend.  This, I grieve to say, was too plainly seen in his relations with Yolanda, for she unquestionably nestled toward him.  She made no effort to conceal her delight in his companionship, though she most adroitly kept him at a proper distance.  If she observed a growing confidence in Max, she quickly nipped it by showing him that she enjoyed my companionship or that of old Franz just as much.  On such occasions Max’s dignity and vanity required balm.

“Oh, Karl,” he said to me one evening while we were preparing for bed, “it seems to me I have just wakened to life, or have just got out of prison.  No man can be happy on a pinnacle above the intimate friendships of his fellow-man and—­and woman.”

“Yes, ‘and woman.’  Well put, Max,” said I.

Max did not notice my insinuation, but continued:—­

“I have lived longer since knowing these lowly friends than in all the years of my life in Styria.  Karl, you have spoiled a good, stiff-jointed Hapsburg, but you have made a man.  If nothing more comes of this journey into the world than I have already had, I am your debtor for life.  What would my dear old father and mother say if they should see me and know the life I am leading?  In their eyes I should be disgraced—­covered with shame.”

“When you go back to Hapsburg,” I said, “you can again take up your old, petrified existence and eat your husks of daily adulation.  You will soon again find satisfaction in the bended knee, and will insist that those who approach you bow deferentially to your ancestors.”

“I shall, of course, return to Hapsburg,” he said.  “It is my fate, and no man can change the destiny to which he was born.  I must also endure the bowing and the adulation.  Men shall honor my ancestors and respect in me their descendant, but I shall never again be without friends if it be in my power to possess them.  As I have said, that is difficult for one placed above his fellow-man.”

“There is the trouble with men of your degree,” I answered.  “Friends are not like castles, cities, and courtly servitors.  Those, indeed, one may really own; but we possess our friends only as they possess us.  Like a mirror, a friend gives us only what we ourselves give.  No king is great enough to produce his own image unless he stands before the glass.”