"You have done well, Jordan," said the king, after a long pause, during which he raised his eyes thoughtfully toward heaven. "Yes, you have done well, and I believe you are right in your objections to my Pantheon. I offer up to you, therefore, my favorite idea. For your dear sake, my Pantheon shall become a ruin. Let this be a proof of the strong love I bear you, Jordan. I will not contend with the priests in my church, but I will pursue them without faltering into their own; and I say to you, this will be a long and stiff-necked war, which will last while my life endures. I will not have my people blinded and stupefied by priests. I will suffer no other king in Prussia. I alone will be king. These proud priests may decide, in silence and humility, to teach their churches and intercede for them; but let them once attempt to play the role of small popes, and to exalt themselves as the only possessors of the key to heaven, then they shall find in me an adversary who will prove to them that the key is false with which they shut up the Holiest of Holies, and is but used by them as a means to rob the people of their worldly goods. Light and truth shall be the device of my whole land. This will I seek after, and by this will I govern Prussia. I will have no blinded subjects, no superstitious, conscience-stricken, trembling, priest-ridden slaves. My people shall learn to think; thought shall be free as the wanton air in Prussia; no censor or police shall limit her boundary. The thoughts of men should be like the life- giving and beautifying sun, all-nourishing and all-enlightening; calling into existence and fructifying, not only the rich, and rare, and lovely, but also the noxious and poisonous plant and the creeping worm. These have also the right of life: if left to themselves, they soon die of their own insignificance or nothingness--die under the contempt of all the good and great." "I fear," said Jordan, "that Frederick the Great is the only man whose mind is so liberal and so unprejudiced. Believe me, my king, there is no living sovereign in Europe who dares guarantee to his subjects free thought and free speech."