Fiction > Book editions > London, 1885 - Prince Otto

52 PRINCE OTTO
' I perceive,' said the young author, with a
certain vinegary twitch, ' that you are unac-
quainted with my opuscula. I am a convinced
authoritarian. I share none of those ilhisory,
Utopian fancies with wliich empirics bhnd them-
selves and exasperate the ignorant. The day of
these ideas is, beheve me, past, or at least passing.'
' When I look about me ' began Otto.
' When you look about you,' interrupted the
licentiate, ' you behold the ignorant. But in the
laboratory of opinion, beside the studious lamp,
we begin already to discard these figments. We
begin to return to nature's order, to what I
might call, if I were to borrow from the lan-
guage of therapeutics, the expectant treatment
of abuses. You will not misunderstand me,' he
continued : ' a country in the condition in which
we find Grilnewald, a prince such as your Prince
Otto, we must explicitly condemn ; they are
behind the age. But I would look for a remedy
not to brute convulsions, but to the natural
supervenience of a more able sovereign. I should
amuse you, perhaps,' added the licentiate, with
a smile, ' I think I should amuse you if I were
to explain my notion of a prince. We who have
studied in the closet, no longer, in this age, pro-
pose ourselves for active service. The paths, we
have perceived, are incompatible. I would not
have a student on the throne, tliouc^h I would