Page:Stevenson - Prince Otto. A Romance.djvu/190

 ‘It is what I fear,’ returned the Doctor.

‘How?’ said Otto. ‘Fear? Fear is the burnt child. I have learned my strength and the weakness of the others; and I now mean to govern.’

Gotthold said nothing, but he looked down and smoothed his chin.

‘You disapprove?’ cried Otto. ‘You are a weathercock.’

‘On the contrary,’ replied the Doctor. ‘My observation has confirmed my fears. It will not do, Otto, not do.’

‘What will not do?’ demanded the Prince, with a sickening stab of pain.

‘None of it,’ answered Gotthold. ‘You are unfitted for a life of action; you lack the stamina, the habit, the restraint, the patience. Your wife is greatly better, vastly better; and though she is in bad hands, displays a very different aptitude. She is a woman of affairs; you are—dear boy, you are yourself. I bid you back to your amusements; like a smiling dominie, I give you holidays for life. Yes,’ he continued, ‘there is a day appointed for all when they shall turn again upon their own philosophy. I had grown to disbelieve impartially in all; and if in the atlas of the sciences there were two charts I disbelieved in more than all the rest, they were politics and morals. I had a sneaking kindness