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The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Volume 07
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KING
'Tis done! And that we need waste no time in choice—let him discuss—me.
ALL (startled).
Your Majesty?
KING
It's very warm here. [Opens his coat.] Let's make ourselves comfortable, Eversmann. Well, Prince—begin. Give us a speech about me.
HOTHAM
Please—
KING
No hesitation—let it be as if I had just died—
HOTHAM
Your Majesty—
KING
Quiet! Silence all. The Prince of Baireuth will give us a speech about me. [Aside.] In vino veritas. I am curious to know whether such a French windbag is composed entirely of falsehoods.
HOTHAM (aside).
This is the decisive moment.
PRINCE (steps forward, he staggers slightly then controls himself).
Merry company!
KING
Merry? I'm dead.
PRINCE
No matter, they're merry just the same.
KING
Gad! is that true?
PRINCE
Merry company—cheerful mourners—permit me to interrupt your enjoyment by a few painful remarks on the qualities of the deceased.
KING
Painful remarks? That's a good beginning.
PRINCE
Friedrich Wilhelm I., King of Prussia, was a great man, in whose character were united the strangest contradictions.
KING
Contradictions!
PRINCE
As with all those who owe their education to their own efforts, so his mind, noble in itself, fell under the influence of disturbing emotions, the saddest of which was distrust.
KING
These are nice things I hear.
PRINCE
He brought his country to a high degree of prosperity, he simplified administration, he improved judicial procedure. But the enjoyment of all these blessings was spoiled for him by his own fault.
KING
Well—well—by his own fault!
SECKENDORF (aside).
The young man must indeed have been drinking heavily.
PRINCE
His vivacity of spirit kept him in a continual unrest which was as painful to others as to himself. When fatigued he could not conceal his desire for pleasant recreation, but his tastes were sufficiently simple to let him prefer satisfying this desire in the bosom of his own family.
EVERSMANN
There'll be a misfortune, surely!
PRINCE
But even here, where he might have reposed on a couch of roses, this unfortunate sovereign made for himself a bed of thorns. His son's unhappy history is so well known that I can pass over it in silence….
KING
In silence—?
