‘You have spoilt a good man,’ rejoined the margravine; ’and that reminds me of a bad one—­a cutthroat.  Have you heard of that creature, the princess’s tutor?  Happily cut loose from us, though!  He has published a book—­a horror! all against Scripture and Divine right!  Is there any one to defend him now, I should like to ask?’

‘I,’ said Ottilia.

‘Gracious me! you have not read the book?’

‘Right through, dear aunt, with all respect to you.’

’It ‘s in the house?’

‘It is in my study.’

‘Then I don’t wonder!  I don’t wonder!’ the margravine exclaimed.

‘Best hear what the enemy has to say,’ Prince Ernest observed.

‘Excellently argued, papa, supposing that he be an enemy.’

’An enemy as much as the fox is the enemy of the poultry-yard, and the hound is the enemy of the fox!’ said the margravine.

‘I take your illustration, auntie,’ said Ottilia.  ’He is the enemy of chickens, and only does not run before the numbers who bark at him.  My noble old Professor is a resolute truth-seeker:  he raises a light to show you the ground you walk on.  How is it that you, adoring heroes as you do, cannot admire him when he stands alone to support his view of the truth!  I would I were by him!  But I am, whenever I hear him abused.’

‘I daresay you discard nothing that the wretch has taught you!’

‘Nothing! nothing!’ said Ottilia, and made my heart live.

The grim and taciturn Baroness Turckems, sitting opposite to her, sighed audibly.

‘Has the princess been trying to convert you?’ the margravine asked her.

‘Trying? no, madam.  Reading? yes.’

‘My good Turckems! you do not get your share of sleep?’

‘It is her Highness the princess who despises sleep.’

’See there the way with your free-thinkers!  They commence by treading under foot the pleasantest half of life, and then they impose their bad habits on their victims.  Ottilia!  Ernest!  I do insist upon having lights extinguished in the child’s apartments by twelve o’clock at midnight.’

‘Twelve o’clock is an extraordinary latitude for children,’ said Ottilia, smiling.

The prince, with a scarce perceptible degree of emphasis, said,

‘Women born to rule must be held exempt from nursery restrictions.’

Here the conversation opened to let me in.  More than once the margravine informed me that I was not the equal of my father.

‘Why,’ said she, ’why can’t you undertake this detestable coal-mine, and let your father disport himself?’

I suggested that it might be because I was not his equal.  She complimented me for inheriting a spark of Roy’s brilliancy.

I fancied there was a conspiracy to force me back from my pretensions by subjecting me to the contemplation of my bare self and actual condition.  Had there been, I should have suffered from less measured strokes.  The unconcerted design to humiliate inferiors is commonly successfuller than conspiracy.