"They are all very kind, too kind to me," said the boy. "I cannot make you understand why I am so miserable, I cannot tell myself--the Prince is worse than all----" "Why is the Prince the worst of all?" said the lady, in a very gentle voice. "All the rest I know are wrong," replied the boy, passionately--"the actors, the Signorina, the pages, and all; but when the Prince looks at me with his quiet smile--when the look comes into his eyes as though he could see through time even into eternity--when he looks at me in his kindly, pitying way--I begin to doubt. Oh, Highness, it is terrible to doubt! Do you think that the Prince is right?" The Princess was silent for a moment or two; it was not that she did not understand the boy, for she understood him very well. "No, I think you are right and not the Prince," she said at length, in her quiet voice. There was a pause: neither seemed to know what to say next. They had now nearly reached the end of the avenue next the palace; the Princess stopped. "Come back with me," she said, "I will show you my house." They walked slowly along the narrow pathway towards the old house at the farther end. The Princess was evidently considering what to say. "Why do you know that they are all wrong?" she said at last. "Highness," said the boy after a pause, "I have never lived amongst, or seen anything, since I was born, but what was natural and real--the forest, the fruit-trees in blossom, the gardens, and the flowers. I have never heard anything except of God--of the wretchedness of sin--of beautiful stories of good people. My grandfather, when he was alive, used to talk to me, as I sat with him at his charcoal-burning in the forest, of my forefathers who were all honest and pious people. There are not many Princes who can say that." The Princess did not seem to notice this last uncourtly speech. "'I shall then find all my forefathers in Heaven,' I would say to him," continued Mark. "'Yes, that thou wilt! we shall then be of high nobility. Do not lose this privilege.' If I lose this privilege, how sad that will be! But here, in the palace, they think nothing of these things--instead of hymns they sing the strangest, wildest songs, so strange and beautiful that I fear and tremble at them as if the sounds were wicked sounds."