ll I summarize it and
say that Owen taught me that there were folks outside palaces, and that
the greatness of a station, even as of a man, stood not in the multitude
of the things that it possessed? The summary is cold and colourless; it
smacks of duty, of obligations unwillingly remembered, of selfish
pleasures reluctantly foregone. As I became old enough to do more than
listen entranced to his stories, it seemed to me that to be such a man
as he was, and not knowing that he himself was admired, could be no
duty, but only a happy dream. There has been in my family, here and
there, a vein of fancy, or of mysticism turning sometimes to religious
fervour, again sometimes to soldierly enthusiasm and a knight-errantry
in arms, the ruin and despair of cool statesmanship. On this element
Owen's teaching laid hold and bent it to a more modern shape. I would
not be a monk or a Bayard, but would serve humanity, holding my throne a
naked trust, whence all but I might reap benefit, whereon I must sit
burdened with the sorrows of all; and thus to be burdened was my joy.
With some boys no example could have made such ideas acceptable, or won
anything but scornful wonder for them; in me they struck answering
chords, and as I rambled in the woods at Artenberg already in my mind I
was the perfect king.

Where would such a mood have led? Where would it have ended? What at the
last would have been my state and fame?

On my fifteenth birthday Prince von Hammerfeldt, now in his
seventy-fifth year, came from Forstadt to Artenberg to offer me
congratulations. Though a boy may have such thoughts as I have tried to
describe, for the most part he would be flogged to death sooner than
utter them; to the Prince above all men an instinct bade me be silent.
But Owen rose steadily to the old man's skilful fly; he did not lecture
the minister nor preach to him, but answered his questions simply and
from the heart, without show and without disguise. Old Hammerfeldt's
face grew into a network of amused and tolerant wrinkles.

"My dear Mr. Owen," said he, "I heard all this forty--fifty--years ago.
Is it not that Jean Jacques has crossed the Channel, turning more sickly
on the way?"

Owen smiled. Mine was the face that grew red in resentment, mine the
tongue that burned to answer him.

"I know what you mean, sir," laughed Owen. "Still doesn't the world go
forward?"

"I see no signs of it," replied Hammerfeldt with a pinch of snuff,
"unless it be