The King smiled. “Well!--it would be better to make a fool of yourself generally than particularly! Folly is not so harmful when spread like jam over a whole slice of bread,--but it may cause a life-long sickness, if swallowed in one secret gulp of sweetness!” The Prince moved uneasily. “You think I am catechising you,--and you resent it--but, my dear boy, let me again remind you that you are in a manner answerable to the nation for your actions; and especially to that particular section of the nation called Society. Society is the least and worst part of the whole community--but it has to be considered by such servants of the public as ourselves. You know what James the First of England wrote concerning the ‘domestic regulations’ on the conduct of a prince and future king? ‘A king is set as one on a stage, whose smallest, actions and gestures all the people gazinglie do behold; and, however just in the discharge of his office, yet if his behaviour be light or dissolute, in indifferent actions, the people, who see but the outward part, conceive preoccupied conceits of the king’s inward intention, which although with time, the trier of all truth, will evanish by the evidence of the contrarie effect, yet, _interim patitur justus_, and prejudged conceits will, in the meantime, breed contempt, the mother of rebellion and disorder.’ Poor James of the ‘goggle eyes and large hysterical heart’ as Carlyle describes him! Do you not agree with his estimate of a royal position?” “I am not aware, Sir, that my behaviour can as yet be called light or dissolute;” replied the Prince coldly, with a touch of hauteur. “I do not call it so, Humphry”--said the King--“To the best of my knowledge, your conduct has always been most exemplary. But with all your excessive decorum, you are mysterious. That is bad! Society will not endure being kept in the dark, or outside the door of things, like a bad child! It wants to be in the room, and know everything and everybody. And this reminds me of another point on which the good English James offers sound advice. ‘Remember to be plaine and sensible in your language; for besides, it is the tongue’s office to be the messenger of the mind, it may be thought a point of imbecilitie of spirit, in a king to speak obscurely, much more untrewly, as if he stood in awe of any in uttering his thoughts.’ That is precisely your mood at the present moment, Humphry,--you stand ‘in awe’--of me or of someone else,--in ‘uttering your thoughts.’” “Pardon me, Sir,--I do not stand in awe of you or of anyone;” said the Prince composedly--“I simply do not choose to ‘utter my thoughts’ just now.” The King looked at him in surprise, and with a touch of admiration. The defiant air he had unconsciously assumed became him,--his handsome face was pale, and his dark eyes coldly brilliant, like those of his beautiful mother, with the steel light of an inflexible resolve.