"If your Royal Highness asks me ... enormously useful! Immeasurably, incalculably useful--that's obvious! The directors are in the seventh heaven, they're getting ready to decorate and illuminate the Spa Hotel! What a recommendation, what an attraction for strangers! Will your Royal Highness just consider--the man is a curiosity! Your Grand Ducal Highness spoke just now of 'his kind'--but there are none of 'his kind'--at most, only a couple. He's a Leviathan, a Croesus! People will come from miles away to see a being who has about half a million a day to spend!" "Gracious!" said Ditlinde, taken aback. "And there's dear Philipp worrying about his peat beds." "The first scene," the Fräulein went on, "begins with two Americans hanging about the Exchange for the last couple of days. Who are they? They are said to be journalists, reporters, for two big New York papers. They have preceded the Leviathan, and are telegraphing to their papers preliminary descriptions of the scenery. When he has got here they will telegraph every step he takes--just as the _Courier_ and the _Advertiser_ report about your Royal Highness...." Albrecht bowed his thanks with eyes downcast and underlip protruded. "He has appropriated the Prince's suite in the Spa Hotel," said Jettchen, "as provisional lodgings." "For himself alone?" asked Ditlinde. "Oh no, Ditlinde, do you suppose he'd be coming alone? There isn't any precise information about his suite and staff, but it's quite certain that his daughter and his physician-in-ordinary are coming with him." "It annoys me, Jettchen, to hear you talking about a 'physician-in-ordinary' and the journalists, too, and the Prince's suite to boot. He's not a king, after all." "A railway king, so far as I know," remarked Albrecht quietly with eyes downcast. "Not only, nor even particularly, a railway king, Royal Highness, according to what I hear. Over in America they have those great business concerns called Trusts, as your Royal Highness knows--the Steel Trust for instance, the Sugar Trust, the Petroleum Trust, the Coal, Meat, and Tobacco Trusts, and goodness knows how many more, and Samuel N. Spoelmann has a finger in nearly all these trusts, and is chief shareholder in them, and managing director--that's what I believe they call them--so his business must be what is called over here a 'Mixed Goods Business.'" "A nice sort of business," said Ditlinde, "it must be a nice sort of business! For you can't persuade me, dear Jettchen, that honest work can make a man into a Leviathan and a Croesus. I am convinced that his riches are steeped in the blood of widows and orphans. What do you think, Albrecht?" "I hope so, Ditlinde, I hope so, for your own and your husband's comfort."