After the quarrel with Von Reuss, the Prince, for reasons of his own, favored me with a great deal of his society.  He was often graciously pleased to talk concerning his early difficulties.

“When I was an understrapper,” he was wont to say, “the land was overswarmed and eaten up by officialdom.  I could not see the good meat wasted upon crawlers.  ‘Get to work,’ said I, ’or ye shall neither eat nor crawl!’

“’We must eat—­to beg we are not ashamed, to steal is the right of our noble Ritterdom,’ the crawlers replied.

“‘So,’ said I, ‘bitte—­as to that we shall see!’

“Then I made me a fine gallows, builded like that outside Paris, which I had seen once when on an embassy for Prince Dietrich.  It was like a castle, with walls twelve feet thick, and on the beams of it room for a hundred or more to swing, each with his six feet of clearance, all comfortable, and no complaints.

“Then came the crawlers and asked me what this fine thing was for.

“‘For the sacred Ritterdom of Plassenburg!’ answered I, ’if it will not cease to burn houses and to ravish and carry off honest men’s wives and daughters.’

“‘But you must catch us!’ quoth Crawlerdom.  ‘Walls fourteen feet thick!’ said they.

“‘Content,’ cried I; ’there is the more fun in catching you.  Only the end is the same—­that is to say, my new, well-ventilated castle out there on the heath, fine girdles and neck-pieces and anklets of iron, and six feet of clearance for each of you to swing in.’

“So they went back to their castles, and robbed and ravished and rieved, even as did their fathers for a thousand years, thinking no evil.  But I took my soldiers, whom in seven years’ service I had taught to obey orders-two foot of clearance did well enough for the disobedient among them, not being either ritters or men of mark.  And I, Karl the Miller’s brat, as at that time they called me in contempt, borrowed cannon—­ great lumbering things—­from my friend the Margrave George, down there to the south.  A great work we had dragging them up to Plassenburg by rope and chain and laboring plough oxen.  We shot them off before the fourteen-feet walls.  Then arose various clouds of dust, shriekings, surrenderings, crying of ’Forgive us, great Prince, we never meant to do it,’ followed, as I had said, by the six-feet clearances.  But these in time I had to reduce to four—­so great became the competition for places in my new Schloss Muellerssohn.

“But ‘Once done, well done—­done forever!’ is my motto.  So since that time the winds have mostly blown through my Schloss untainted, and the sons of Ritterdom, magnanimous captains and honest bailies of quiet bailiwicks, are my very good friends and faithful officers.”

Prince Karl the Miller’s Son was silent a moment.

“But I am still looking out for another man with a head-piece to come after me.  I have no son, and if I had, the chances are ten to one that he would be either a milksop or a flittermouse painted blue.  Milksops I hate, and send to the monkeries.  I can endure flittermice painted blue, but they must wear petticoats—­and pretty petticoats too.  Have you observed those of the Princess?” said he, abruptly changing the subject.