"Well!--it would be better to make a fool of yourself generally than
particularly! Folly is not so harmful when spread like jam over a whole
slice of bread,--but it may cause a life-long sickness, if swallowed in
one secret gulp of sweetness!"

The Prince moved uneasily.

"You think I am catechising you,--and you resent it--but, my dear boy,
let me again remind you that you are in a manner answerable to the
nation for your actions; and especially to that particular section of
the nation called Society. Society is the least and worst part of the
whole community--but it has to be considered by such servants of the
public as ourselves. You know what James the First of England wrote
concerning the 'domestic regulations' on the conduct of a prince and
future king? 'A king is set as one on a stage, whose smallest, actions
and gestures all the people gazinglie do behold; and, however just in
the discharge of his office, yet if his behaviour be light or
dissolute, in indifferent actions, the people, who see but the outward
part, conceive preoccupied conceits of the king's inward intention,
which although with time, the trier of all truth, will evanish by the
evidence of the contrarie effect, yet, _interim patitur justus_,
and prejudged conceits will, in the meantime, breed contempt, the
mother of rebellion and disorder.' Poor James of the 'goggle eyes and
large hysterical heart' as Carlyle describes him! Do you not agree with
his estimate of a royal position?"

"I am not aware, Sir, that my behaviour can as yet be called light or
dissolute;" replied the Prince coldly, with a touch of hauteur.