"Ah, your majesty promised to answer my questions, and now you evade
them, but I will reply frankly. I have done nothing to deserve your
love, but also nothing to make me unworthy of it. Why are you, who
are so good and kind to all others, so stern and harsh with me?"

"I will tell you the truth," said the king, earnestly. "You have
deserved my displeasure, you have desired to be a free man, to cast
aside the yoke that Providence placed upon you, you had the grand
presumption to dare to be the master of your own actions."

"And does your majesty desire and expect me to resign this most
natural of human rights?" said the prince, angrily.

"Yes, I desire and expect it. I can truthfully say that I have given
my brothers a good example in this particular."

"But you did not do this willingly. You were cruelly forced to
submission, and you now wish to drive us to an extremity you have,
doubtlessly, long since forgotten. Now, you suffered and struggled
before declaring yourself conquered."

"No," said the king, softly, "I have not forgotten. I still feel the
wound in my soul, and at times it burns."

"And yet, my brother?"

"And yet I will have no pity with you. I say to you, as my father
said to me: 'You must submit; you are a prince, and I am your king!'
I have long since acknowledged that my father was right in his