incident belongs to Fairyland.'

'You are not then,' asked the Prince, 'an authoritarian?'

'I? God bless me, no!' said Gotthold. 'I am a red, dear child.'

'That brings me then to my next point, and by a natural transition.
If I am so clearly unfitted for my post,' the Prince asked; 'if my
friends admit it, if my subjects clamour for my downfall, if
revolution is preparing at this hour, must I not go forth to meet
the inevitable? should I not save these horrors and be done with
these absurdities? in a word, should I not abdicate? O, believe me,
I feel the ridicule, the vast abuse of language,' he added, wincing,
'but even a principulus like me cannot resign; he must make a great
gesture, and come buskined forth, and abdicate.'

'Ay,' said Gotthold, 'or else stay where he is. What gnat has
bitten you to-day? Do you not know that you are touching, with lay
hands, the very holiest inwards of philosophy, where madness dwells?
Ay, Otto, madness; for in the serene temples of the wise, the inmost
shrine, which we carefully keep locked, is full of spiders' webs.
All men, all, are fundamentally useless; nature tolerates, she does
not need, she does not use them: sterile flowers! All - down to the
fellow swinking in a byre, whom fools point out for the exception -
all are useless; all weave ropes of sand; or like a child that has
breathed on a window, write and obliterate, write and obliterate,
idle words! Talk of it no more. That way, I tell you, madness
lies.' The speaker rose from his chair and then sat down again. He
laughed a little laugh, and then, changing his tone, resumed: 'Yes,
dear child, we are not here to do battle with giants; we are here to