"And isn't it true?" cried Giraldi. "Doesn't the colossus really stand on feet of masonry? What good is all this bloated boasting of the power and the majesty and the cultural mission of the German Empire? The end of the whole story, which he carefully avoids mentioning--or at most has added very obscurely--is ever the strong Prussian kingdom. What good can it do him to change restlessly from one rôle to another, and proclaim today the universal right of suffrage, to thunder against socialism tomorrow, day after tomorrow, in turn, to censure the _bourgeoisie_ as though they were rude schoolboys. He is, and will always be, the _major domus_ of the Hohenzollerns, whether he will or not, in moments of impatience at his most gracious lord's wise hesitation on some point, of anger at the intrigues of the court _camarilla_, or whatever else may stir up his haughty soul. Believe me, Your Excellency, this man, in spite of the liberalism which he wears most diligently for appearances' sake, is an aristocrat from head to foot, and, in spite of his oft-vaunted broad-mindedness, is full of medieval, romantic cobwebs; he can at heart never desire anything, and will never desire anything, but a kingdom by divine right, and, while desiring a kingdom by divine right, he works away at one by the people's right. Or what else is it, when he uproots respect for the clergy in the people--not only for the Catholic clergy!--The interests of all sects have always been common, and the sympathy which a maltreated Catholic clergy awakens in the Protestant will soon enough come to light. But without clerics there will be no God, and no king by divine right--that is to say, he cuts off the branch to which he clings. Now if he were not to take the thing nearly as seriously as he does, if he were to be--which is incredible to me--so narrow-minded and frivolous as to regard it all only in the light of a question of etiquette, a dispute over precedence of the _major domus_ and grandees in the state of his own creation, which he wishes to justify in the eyes of the church, then history would lead him back _ad absurdum_, for it teaches on every page that a priest never accepts this subordination; at the most, he endures it if he must. We are what we always have been, and always shall be. And, Your Excellency, that is his Achilles' heel--not to understand this, to believe that he can intimidate us by threats and frights, and make us into creatures of his will. When he sees that he will not get anywhere that way--and I hope he will not see it very soon--he will try to compromise with us, and compromise again and again, and be driven step by step into the camp of the reactionaries; he will be forced to express more and more openly the contradiction of his purpose--the kingdom by divine right and his methods which he has borrowed from the arsenal of the revolution; and this contradiction into which he is hopelessly driving,