"We have built no great buildings," said Mettlich bluntly. "Wars have
left us no money, Majesty, for building!"

That being a closed road, so to speak, Karl tried another. "The Crown
Prince must be quite a lad," he experimented. "He was a babe in arms,
then, but frail, I thought."

"He is sturdy now." The Chancellor relapsed into watchfulness.

"Before I see the Princess Hedwig," Karl made another attempt, "it might
be well to tell me how she feels about things. I would like to feel that
the prospect is at least not disagreeable to her."

The Chancellor was not listening. There was trouble ahead. It had come,
then, after all. He muttered something behind his gray mustache. The
horses stopped, as the crowd suddenly closed in front of them.

"Drive on!" he said angrily, and the coachman touched his whip to the
horses. But they only reared, to be grasped at the bridles by hostile
hands ahead.

Karl half rose from his seat.

"Sit still, Majesty," said the Chancellor. "It is the students. They
will talk, that is all."

But it came perilously near to being a riot. Led by some students,
pushed by others, the crowd surrounded the two carriages, first
muttering, then yelling. A stone was hurled, and struck one of the
horses. Another dented the body of the carriage itself. A man with a
handkerchief tied over the lower half of his face mounted the shoulders
of two companions, and harangued the crowd. They wanted no friendship
with Karnia. There were those who would sell them out to their neighbor
and enemy. Were they to lose their national existence? He exhorted them
madly through the handkerchief. Others, further back, also raised above
the mob, shrieked treason, and called the citizens to arm against this
thing. A Babel of noise, of swinging back and forth, of mounted police
pushing through to surround the carriage, of cries and the dominating
voices of the student-demagogues. Then at last a semblance of order, low
muttering, an escort of police with drawn revolvers around the carriage,
and it moved ahead.

Through it all the Chancellor had sat with folded arms. Only his livid
face told of his fury. Karl, too, had sat impassive, picking at his
small mustache. But, as the carriage moved on, he said: "A few moments
ago I observed that there had been few changes. But there has been, I
perceive, after all, a great change."

"One cannot judge the many by the few, Majesty."

But Karl only raised his eyebrows.

In his ro