Nevertheless, when a half-hour later his father told him that the Emperor had invited him to visit the _Hohenzollern_ the day of his return, he sniffed with youthful Americanism. “I don’t fancy waiting till I’m spoken to,” he announced--“for his high-mightiness to introduce every subject. He may be interesting in himself, but he is a monarch, and I have no use for any of them. They are a burlesque in the end of the nineteenth century.” “Tell that to William, if you like, and introduce what subjects interest you--if you get a chance. He observes little formality up here, and less with Americans. Now please go and exchange that sweater and those pants--they are not trousers--for a suit of flannels.” XXI Fessenden drew a long and audible breath. It had not occurred to him soon enough to keep tally, but he felt justified in assuming that he had answered eight hundred questions. The power and magnetism of the Emperor still impressed him, but the fascination had waned. When he had boarded the yacht early in the afternoon, excited with a sensation that was half eager curiosity, half aggressive fear of being patronized, and had received a hearty greeting from a man as informal as he was charming, Fessenden had promptly conceived his first enthusiasm for a contemporary. He had as promptly reminded himself that he too intended to inspire enthusiasms--that his was not the rôle of the follower; nevertheless he had beamed back upon his imperial host; and, in spite of a flinty reserve in the background of both pairs of eyes, a mutual friendship was conceived at once. The Emperor had taken care to cement his personal fascination by exhibiting the machinery of his new yacht to his curious young guest, and a twenty-minutes’ argument on a subject of which one had much practical knowledge and the other almost as much by theory and observation, established a respect as strong as the sentiment. But when they were seated alone on deck, the Emperor’s inquiring mind was no longer to be restrained. A conversation with Mr. Abbott the day before had excited his curiosity; his interrogations began upon Fessenden’s babyhood; and then, with the rapid strokes of a minute impressionist, never losing sight of causes and effects, he built up a complete picture of a self-made boy with a beneficent providence in the background. In three-quarters of an hour he not only knew the boy in the wilderness as well as the boy had known himself, but the history of the Nettlebecks, the size and condition of their farm, their attitude--or, as he discovered, their lack of attitude--towards Germany, the area of the Adirondack tract, the attention--or lack of attention--given it by the government, the inferior condition, as compared with Germany, of its forests, its roads, its bridges. His questions and comments showed such grasp and activity of intelligence that for a time Fessenden was as interested as the Man of Questions, and there were intervals when he was permitted