of a young, immensely wealthy scion of royalty. The court
treated Prince Louis with marked distinction, the ladies petted him,
gentlemen showed him the most flattering attention.

Precocious, as people become in the hot-house atmosphere of
aristocratic society, reflective and shy, as only children, who are
reared among grown people, without intercourse with companions of their
own age, almost always are, endowed, moreover, with a critical mind,
which always confronted appearances sceptically and anxiously went to
the bottom of everything, Prince Louis, unlike so many of his equals in
rank, did not accept the tokens of consideration offered him on all
sides as a matter of course, but constantly asked himself their cause.
He was honest with himself and admitted that he owed his sovereign's
clasp of the hand, the wooing smiles of the ladies, the cordial
advances of men of rank and distinction, not to his own personality,
but to his title and his wealth.

"What do they all know about me?" he often said to himself, when he
returned from an entertainment at court to his splendid palace,
tenanted only by servants. "Nothing! They give me no chance to open
my mouth, and if everything I said to-night had been written down and
laid before a man who was capable of judging, that he might give an
opinion of the person who made these remarks, he could not truthfully
say anything except: 'The fellow is perhaps not actually a simpleton,
but does not surpass mediocrity.' Yet I am received as if I were some
one of consequence. Yes, that's just it: it is not I, Louis, who am
treated so, for no one would trouble himself about me, but Prince Etc."
He became really jealous of "Prince Etc.," whom he regarded almost as
an enemy, who supplanted and cast into the shade his own individuality,
and the noble ambition entered his mind to win esteem by his
personality, not by the external advantages which chance had bestowed.

But this was no easy matter. "Prince Etc." everywhere stood
intrusively in his way and would allow poor "Louis" no opportunity. He
went to a university, less in order to study than to steep himself for
a few terms in the poetry of student life. The members of his
extremely aristocratic club formed in two ranks before him when he went
to their tavern, and old professors whom, hitherto, he had admired for
their works, blushed with joyous emotion when he introduced himself to
them, and in the class-room appeared to addre