HOTHAM (aside).

This is the decisive moment.

PRINCE (steps forward, he staggers slightly then controls himself).

Merry company!

KING.

Merry?  I’m dead.

PRINCE.

No matter, they’re merry just the same.

KING.

Gad! is that true?

PRINCE.

Merry company—­cheerful mourners—­permit me to interrupt your enjoyment by a few painful remarks on the qualities of the deceased.

KING.

Painful remarks?  That’s a good beginning.

PRINCE.

Friedrich Wilhelm I., King of Prussia, was a great man, in whose character were united the strangest contradictions.

KING.

Contradictions!

PRINCE.

As with all those who owe their education to their own efforts, so his mind, noble in itself, fell under the influence of disturbing emotions, the saddest of which was distrust.

KING.

These are nice things I hear.

PRINCE.

He brought his country to a high degree of prosperity, he simplified administration, he improved judicial procedure.  But the enjoyment of all these blessings was spoiled for him by his own fault.

KING.

Well—­well—­by his own fault!

SECKENDORF (aside).

The young man must indeed have been drinking heavily.

PRINCE.

His vivacity of spirit kept him in a continual unrest which was as painful to others as to himself.  When fatigued he could not conceal his desire for pleasant recreation, but his tastes were sufficiently simple to let him prefer satisfying this desire in the bosom of his own family.

EVERSMANN.

There’ll be a misfortune, surely!

PRINCE.

But even here, where he might have reposed on a couch of roses, this unfortunate sovereign made for himself a bed of thorns.  His son’s unhappy history is so well known that I can pass over it in silence....

KING.

In silence—?

PRINCE.

Friedrich Wilhelm could not understand the freedom of the human will.  He would have grafted stem to stem, son on father, youth on age.  In planning to bestow the hand of his charming daughter, now here, now there, it never came to his mind that her heart might have a right to choose—­it never occurred to him to ask:  “Does my choice make you happy, child?”

KING.

Eversmann, take this pipe.

PRINCE.

Now he is departed.  Those minions who during his lifetime came between the heart of the mother and the heart of the husband and father, those minions tremble now.  It remains to be seen how the misunderstood son will dispose of them.  The father’s deeds will remain the foundation of this state.  But a milder spirit will reign in the land; the arts and sciences will outdistance the fame of cannon and bullet.  And the soaring eagle of Prussia will now truly fulfil his device, Nec Soli Cedis—­or, to put it in German, “Even the sun’s glance shall not dazzle thee!  Even the sun shall stand aside from out thy path!” [He recollects himself, and after a pause returns to the table, again pretending drunkenness.] Hotham, give me something to drink.