WILHELMINE.

Prince, you employ too harsh an expression for what I would rather term merely our own peculiar ceremonial.  In Versailles they glide as on butterfly wings over the polished floors.  Here we tread the earth with ringing spurs.  In Versailles the Royal Family consider themselves but as a merry company, recognizing no ties as sacred save those of congeniality, no bond but that of—­unfettered inclination.  Here the Court is merely one big middle-class family, where a prayer is said before meat, where the parents must always be the first to speak, where strictest obedience must, if necessary, tolerate even absurdities; where one quarrels, out of one’s mutual affection, sometimes—­where we even torture one another and make life harder for one another—­all out of love—­

PRINCE.

Princess, I swear to you—­this must be changed.

WILHELMINE.

And how, pray?

PRINCE.

The Crown Prince asked me to employ all conceivable means to free you from this barbarism.  I am at your service entirely—­command me.  His first thought was for your mental needs.  How is it with your knowledge of French?

WILHELMINE.

The King detests all things foreign, and most of all does he detest
France, her literature, her language.

PRINCE.

The Crown Prince is aware of that.  He sends you therefore, as a beginning, a member of his Rheinsberg circle, a talkative but very learned little man, a Frenchman, Laharpe by name—­

WILHELMINE.

All instructors of the French language have been banished from Berlin by strictest order.

PRINCE.

Laharpe will come to you without his identity becoming known.

WILHELMINE.

That is impossible.  No one dare approach me who cannot first satisfy the questioning of the Castle Guard.

PRINCE.

Cannot Laharpe instruct you in the apartments of your, Lady-in-waiting,
Frauelein von Sonnsfeld?  WILHELMINE.  Impossible.

PRINCE.

In the Queen’s rooms, then.

WILHELMINE.

Impossible.

THE PRINCE.

By Heaven!  Do they never leave you alone for one hour?

WILHELMINE.

Oh yes, two hours every Sunday—­in church.

PRINCE.

But this is appalling!  Why, in Versailles every Princess has her own establishment when she is but ten years old—­and even her very dolls have their ladies-in-waiting!

WILHELMINE.

The only place which I may visit occasionally, and remain in unaccompanied, are those rooms over there, in the lower story of the palace.

PRINCE.

The King’s private library, no doubt?

WILHELMINE.

No.

PRINCE.

A gallery of family portraits?

WILHELMINE.

Do you see the smoke issuing from the open window?

PRINCE.