‘O, love!’ cried Gotthold; ‘love is a great word; it is in all the dictionaries. If you had loved, she would have paid you back. What does she ask? A little ardour!’ ‘It is hard to love for two,’ replied the Prince. ‘Hard? Why, there’s the touchstone! O, I know my poets!’ cried the Doctor. ‘We are but dust and fire, too and to endure life’s scorching; and love, like the shadow of a great rock, should lend shelter and refreshment, not to the lover only, but to his mistress and to the children that reward them; and their very friends should seek repose in the fringes of that peace. Love is not love that cannot build a home. And you call it love to grudge and quarrel and pick faults? You call it love to thwart her to her face, and bandy insults? Love!’ ‘Gotthold, you are unjust. I was then fighting for my country,’ said the Prince. ‘Ay, and there’s the worst of all,’ returned the Doctor. ‘You could not even see that you were wrong; that being where they were, retreat was ruin.’ Why, you supported me!’ cried Otto. ‘I did. I was a fool like you,’ replied Gotthold. ‘But now my eyes are open. If you go on as you have started, disgrace this fellow Gondremark, and publish the scandal of your divided house, there will befall a most abominable thing in Grünewald. A revolution, friend—a revolution.’ ‘You speak strangely for a red,’ said Otto. ‘A red republican, but not a revolutionary,’ returned the Doctor. ‘An ugly thing is a Grünewalder drunk! One man alone can save the country from this pass, and that is the double-dealer Gondremark, with whom I conjure you to make peace. It will not be you; it never can be you:—you, who can do nothing, as your wife said, but trade upon your station—you, who spent the hours in begging money! And in God’s name, what for? Why money? What mystery of idiocy was this?’ ‘It was to no ill end. It was to buy a farm,’ quoth Otto sulkily. ‘To buy a farm!’ cried Gotthold. ‘Buy a farm!’ ‘Well, what then?’ returned Otto. ‘I have bought it, if you come to that.’ Gotthold fairly bounded on his seat. ‘And how that?’ he cried. ‘How?’ repeated Otto, startled. ‘Ay, verily, how!’ returned the Doctor. ‘How came you by the money?’ The Prince’s countenance darkened. ‘That is my affair,’ said he. ‘You see you are ashamed,’ retorted Gotthold. ‘And so you bought a farm in the hour of our country’s need—doubtless to be ready for the abdication; and I put it that you stole the funds. There are not three ways of getting money: there are but two: to earn and steal. And now, when you have combined Charles the Fifth and Long-fingered Tom, you come to me to fortify your vanity! But I will clear my mind upon this matter: until I know the right and wrong of the transaction, I put my hand behind my back. A man may be the pitifullest prince; he must be a spotless gentleman.’ The Prince had gotten to his feet, as pale as paper. Gotthold,’ he said, ‘you drive me beyond bounds. Beware, sir, beware!’