He had of course been called handsome in his childhood,--what heir to a Throne ever lived that was not beautiful, to his nurse at least?--and in his early youth he had been grossly flattered for his cleverness as well as his good looks. Every small attempt at witticism,--every poor joke he could invent, adapt or repeat, was laughed at approvingly in a chorus of admiration by smirking human creatures, male and female, who bowed and bobbed up and down before the lad like strange dolphins disporting themselves on dry land. Whereat he grew to despise the dolphins, and no wonder. When he was about seventeen or eighteen he began to ask odd questions of one of his preceptors, a learned and ceremonious personage who, considering the extent of his certificated wisdom, was yet so singularly servile of habit and disposition that he might have won a success on the stage as Chief Toady in a burlesque of Court life. He was a pale, thin old man, with a wizened face set well back amid wisps of white hair, and a scraggy throat which asserted its working muscles visibly whenever he spoke, laughed or took food. His way of shaking hands expressed his moral flabbiness in the general dampness, looseness and limpness of the act,--not that he often shook hands with his pupil, for though that pupil was only a boy made of ordinary flesh and blood like other boys, he was nevertheless heir to a Throne, and in strict etiquette even friendly liberties were not to be too frequently taken with such an Exalted little bit of humanity. The lad himself, however, had a certain mischievous delight in making him perform this courtesy, and being young and vigorous, would often squeeze the old gentleman’s hesitating fingers in his strong clasp so energetically as to cause him the severest pain. Student of many philosophies as he was, the worthy pedagogue would have cried out, or sworn profane oaths in his agony, had it been any other than the ‘Heir-Apparent’ who thus made him wince with torture,--but as matters stood, he merely smiled--and bore it. The young rascal of a prince smiled too,--taking note of his obsequious hypocrisy, which served an inquiring mind with quite as good a field for logical speculation as any problem in Euclid. And he went on with his questions,--questions, which if not puzzling, were at least irritating enough to have secured him a rap on the knuckles from his tutor’s cane, had he been a grocer’s lad instead of the eldest son of a Royal house. “Professor,” he said on one occasion, “What is man?” “Man,” replied the professor sedately, “is an intelligent and reasoning being, evolved by natural processes of creation into his present condition of supremacy.” “What is Supremacy?” “The state of being above, or superior to, the rest of the animal creation.” “And is he so superior?” “He is generally so admitted.” “Is my father a man?” “Assuredly! The question is superfluous.” “What makes him a King?”