"The law," answered Herr von Knobelsdorff, unshaken, "places it in your Royal Highness's hand to put aside dynastic scruples. With us the grant of an advance in rank and even of equal birth belongs to the prerogatives of the monarch, and when could history show a more potent motive for the exercise of these privileges? This union bears the mark of its own genuineness, preparations have been long in making for its reception in the heart of the people, and your entire princely and State approval would signify to the people nothing more than an outward satisfaction of their inmost convictions." And Herr von Knobelsdorff went on to speak of Imma Spoelmann's popularity, of the significant demonstration in connexion with her recovery from a slight indisposition, of the position of equal birth which this exceptional person assumed in popular fancy--and the wrinkles played round his eyes as he reminded Albrecht of the old prophecy current among the people, which told of a prince who would give the country more with one hand than others had given it with two, and eloquently demonstrated how the union between Klaus Heinrich and Spoelmann's daughter must seem to the people the fulfilment of the oracle, and thus God's will and right and proper. Herr von Knobelsdorff said a great deal more which was clever, honest, and good. He alluded to the fourfold mixture of blood in Imma Spoelmann--for besides the Anglo-Saxon, Portuguese and German, some drops of ancient Indian blood were said to flow in her veins--and emphasized the fact that he expected the dynasty to benefit greatly by the quickening effect of the mixture of races on ancient stocks. But the artless old gentleman made his greatest effect when he talked about the huge and beneficial alterations which would be caused in the economical state of the Court itself, our debt-laden and sore-pressed Court, through the heir to the throne's bold marriage. It was at this point that Albrecht sucked most proudly at his upper lip. The value of gold was falling, the out-goings were increasing--increasing in pursuance of an economic law which held for the Court finances just as much as for every private household; and there was no possibility of increasing the revenues. But it was not right that the monarch's means should be inferior to those of many of his subjects; it was from the monarch's point of view intolerable that soap-boiler Unschlitt's house should have had central heating a long time ago, but that the Old Schloss should not have got it yet. A remedy was necessary, in more than one way, and lucky was the princely house to which so grand a remedy as this offered itself.