“The career,” replied Fritz, “that would be most congenial to my taste is that of a conqueror.”

“A conqueror!”

“Yes; Alexander, Scipio, Timour the Tartar, and Gengis Khan are the sort of men I should like to resemble.  They have made a tolerable figure in the world, and I should have no objection to follow in their footsteps.”

“But you forget that their footsteps are marked with tears, disasters, terror, and bloodshed.”

“These are indispensable.”

“Why?”

“Once, when a great commander was asked the same question, he replied, that you cannot make omelets without breaking eggs.”

“Yes,” remarked Becker, “but if you had read the anecdote entire, you would have seen that he was asked in return, ’What use there was for so many omelets.’”

“Added to which,” continued Wolston, “that is not a normal career; there is no diploma required for it; it is an accident arising out of adventitious circumstances, sometimes fostered by ambition, but no course of study can produce a conqueror.”

“What, then, is the use of military schools?”

“They are, to the best of my knowledge, instituted for rearing defenders for one’s country, and not with a view to the subjugation of another’s.”

“My poor Fritz,” said Mrs. Becker laughing, “I hope when you conquer half the world, you will find an occupation for your mother more in consonance with your dignity than mending your stockings.”

“Then, again,” continued Wolston, “war cannot be waged by a single individual.”

“There must be an enemy somewhere,” suggested Willis.

“The difficulty does not, however, lie there,” observed Jack; “for, if we have no enemies, it is easy enough to make them.”

“There must, at all events, be armies, magazines, and a treasury—­or eggs, as the great commander in question hinted.”

“True,” replied Fritz; “but there is the same difficulty as regards all professions; there can be no barristers without briefs, no physicians without patients.”

“You will admit, however, that clients and patients are not so rare as hundreds of thousands of armed men and millions of money.”

“Brother,” said Jack, “your cavalry are routed and your infantry outflanked.”

“If you are determined to be a conqueror, let it be by the pen rather than by the sword—­or, what do you say to oratory?  It is not easier, perhaps, but, at all events, eloquence is not denied to ordinary mortals.  You will not then, to be sure, rank with the Hannibals, the Tamerlanes, or the Caesars; but you may attain a place with Demosthenes, who was more dreaded by Philip of Macedon than an army of soldiers.”

“Or Cicero,” remarked Becker, “who preserved his country from the rapacity of Cataline.”

“Or Peter the Hermit,” remarked Frank, “who by his eloquence roused Europe against the Saracens.”

“Or Bossuet,” added Wolston, “and then you may venture to assert in the face of kings that God alone is Great, should they, like Louis XIV., assume the sun as an emblem, and adopt such a silly scroll as ‘Nec pluribus impar.’”