Could the King only have known it, Max had already found his choice nearer home. His domestic arrangements having been temporarily disturbed by a certain lady's departure to visit her son on his estates, he had gone off on a spurt of social curiosity to inspect the slums of his father's capital, and on the third day of his investigation had spied, under a nursing sister's habit, and above a gentle breast bearing an ivory cross, the face of his dreams. Having taken scientific steps to discover whether that particular garb entailed celibate vows, and learning that it did not, he had industriously run its wearer to sainted earth--had, that is to say, pursued her to a top-floor tenement and there found her upon her knees with sanitary zeal scrubbing dirt from the boards of poverty; and poverty upon its bed whimpering with rage and feebly cursing her for thus coming to disturb its peace. Thus they had met, and very promptly and practically had the wearer of the habit made him pay the price for his intrusion by setting him there and then to work of a kind he had never tackled before. Who she was, and all the sacred dance that she led him on holy feet, before she gave him that reward which was his due, will be told in the later pages of this history. For the present Max had hardly any idea how pure and deep a Jordan he was about to be dipped in, or how thorough a scrubbing he himself was to receive. His voice was still like the rollings of Abana and Pharpar, when he came on this next evening to discourse up-to-date wisdom in his father's ears; not a hair of his well-groomed head showed the ruffling of perturbed thoughts within, nor were his self-confidence and easy satisfaction in the moral and mental liberties wherein he ranged at large in any way diminished or disturbed. When they had settled down to their talk, the King confidentially broached the proposed visit of the Hereditary Prince of Schnapps-Wasser and its intended significance. Max did not seem particularly impressed. "What does Charlotte say about it?" he inquired casually. "Charlotte does not say anything. How should she? She does not yet know." Max smiled. "It will be time, then, to talk about it when she does." "But there is really nobody else; and Charlotte must marry somebody." "Has she said so?" inquired Max. "My own impression is that she will have to get through at least one good healthy love affair of her own before she settles down to anything you or the Courts of Europe can provide. After that--if you let her plunge deep enough--you won't have any trouble; she will marry anything you offer. Of course, if you really believed in monarchy as a principle, and not as a mere expedient--a divine institution, and not as the last ditch in which the old class-barriers have to be maintained--you would let her marry any one she chose. It would do the monarchy no harm, and might do it good."