“You are not inclined to do so?” asked the colonel, shocked.  “Not even,” he continued more softly, “when I tell you that the Electress knows our plans and consents to them?”

“Not even then, colonel.  However much I love my mother, yet in this matter I can not suffer myself to be guided by her wishes.  No, Colonel von Burgsdorf, I am not minded to go into your plans; for have you well considered what you require of me?  You ask me to head a revolution, to give you a deed of rebellion, and to call upon the noblemen of the country to revolt against their rightful Sovereign.  You ask me, as a rebel and agitator, and yet at the same time only as your tool, to do force and violence to my lord and father, and to force him to dismiss his minister, to alter his system, and to make enemies of his friends and friends of his enemies.  Truly, you offer me a great advantage in prospective, and are good enough to propose that I step into Count Schwarzenberg’s place and rule the country in the Elector’s name, as he has done.  But I am not blind to my own shortcomings, and do not overestimate myself.  I know very well that I am as yet but an inexperienced young man, who has still a great deal to learn, and is by no means in a position to take the place of so distinguished and adroit a statesman as Count Schwarzenberg.  I must yet go to school to him, and learn from him statecraft and policy.”

“Will you learn from him, gracious sir?” cried Burgsdorf passionately, “would you go to school to him, to that Catholic, that Imperialist?”

“Tell me a better schoolmaster for my father’s son?” asked the Electoral Prince softly.  “My father has bestowed full confidence upon him for these twenty years past, he has adhered firmly and faithfully to him in evil as well as in prosperous days, and therefore I conclude that the count is worthy of this unshaken confidence, and must well deserve his master’s love.  It would, therefore, be very disrespectful behavior on my part toward my father, and put me in the light of exalting myself against him in unchildlike disobedience, if I should make the attempt to remove Count Schwarzenberg from his side by force.  The Elector alone is reigning Sovereign within his own dominions, and what he concludes must be good, and it does not become us to censure or presume to know better.”

“Your grace, then, will be nothing but an obedient and submissive son?” asked Burgsdorf in a cutting tone.

“Nothing further, Burgsdorf,” replied Frederick William quietly.  “May my father yet live to rule long years in peace; I am still young, I am learning and waiting.”