How do you find His Royal Highness ?' The old man saluted, military fashion.

'Not very well, your Highness,' he answered.

'I've been valet to your Highness's nephew since his majority, and I was valet to his Royal father before him, but I never saw--' He stopped, and threw up his wrinkled hands deprecatingly.
'You never saw what ?' Aribert smiled affectionately on the old fellow.
You could perceive that these two, so sharply differentiated in rank, had been intimate in the past, and would be intimate again.
'Do you know, my Prince,' said the old man, 'that we are to receive the financier, Sampson Levi--is that his name ?--in the audience chamber?
Surely, if I may humbly suggest, the library would have been good enough for a financier ?' 'One would have thought so,' agreed Prince Aribert, 'but perhaps your master has a special reason.

Tell me,' he went on, changing the subject quickly, 'how came it that you left the Prince, my nephew, at Ostend, and returned to Posen ?' 'His orders, Prince,' and old Hans, who had had a wide experience of Royal whims and knew half the secrets of the Courts of Europe, gave Aribert a look which might have meant anything.

'He sent me back on an--an errand, your Highness.' 'And you were to rejoin him here ?' 'Just so, Highness.