clothes, and learning, and music, and all the
fruition that your fastidious fancy craves: we are cold and hungry, and
ignorant and miserable. Leave us our heaven! At least, if you do not
believe in it, keep silence before us. Our belief does not trouble you;
it takes nothing from the least of your pleasures; it is all we have.'"

"When the Prince begins to preach," said the Princess, with scarcely
less contempt than she had shown for Mark, "I always leave the room."

The Count immediately rose and opened a small door leading to a boudoir.
The Prince rose and bowed. The Princess swept to the ground before him
in an elaborate curtsey, and, looking contemptuously, yet with a certain
amused interest, at Mark, left the room.

The Prince resumed his seat, and, leaning back, looked from one to the
other of his companions. He was really thinking with amusement what a
so strangely-assorted couple might be likely to say to each other; but
the Count, misled by his desire to please the Prince, misunderstood him.
He supposed that he wished that the conversation which the Princess had
interrupted should be continued, and, sitting down, he began again.

"I suppose, Herr Tutor," he said, "you propose to train your pupils so
that they shall be best fitted to mingle with the world in which they
will be called upon to play an important part?"

The Prince motioned to Mark to sit, which he did, upon the edge of an
embroidered couch.

"If the serene Highness," he said, "had wished for one to teach his
children who knew the great world and the cities he would not have sent
for me."

"What do you teach them, then?"

"I tell them beautiful histories," said Mark, "of good people, and of
love, and of God."

"It has been proved," said the Count, "that there is no God."

"Then there is still love," said the boy.

"Yes, there is still love," said the Count, with an amused glance at the
Prince; "all the more that we have got rid of a cruel God."

The boy's face flushed.

"How can you dare say that?" he said.

"Why," said the Count, with a simulated warmth, "what is the God of you
pious people but a cruel God? He who condemns the weak and the
ignorant--the weak whom He has Himself made weak, and the ignorant whom
He keeps in darkness--to an eternity of torture for a trivial and
temporary, if not an unconscious, fault? What is that God but cruel who
will not forgive till He has gratified His revenge upon His own Son?
What is that God b