something smooth and smug about them; he was tall, but he was clumsily put together, and he walked with a slight slouch.  Really, they thought, this youth was more like some kind of foreign tenor than anything else.  These were serious disadvantages; but the line of conduct which the Prince adopted from the first moment of his arrival was far from calculated to dispel them.  Owing partly to a natural awkwardness, partly to a fear of undue familiarity, and partly to a desire to be absolutely correct, his manners were infused with an extraordinary stiffness and formality.  Whenever he appeared in company, he seemed to be surrounded by a thick hedge of prickly etiquette.  He never went out into ordinary society; he never walked in the streets of London; he was invariably accompanied by an equerry when he rode or drove.  He wanted to be irreproachable and, if that involved friendlessness, it could not be helped.  Besides, he had no very high opinion of the English.  So far as he could see, they cared for nothing but fox-hunting and Sunday observances; they oscillated between an undue frivolity and an undue gloom; if you spoke to them of friendly joyousness they stared; and they did not understand either the Laws of Thought or the wit of a German University.  Since it was clear that with such people he could have very little in common, there was no reason whatever for relaxing in their favour the rules of etiquette.  In strict privacy, he could be natural and charming; Seymour and Anson were devoted to him, and he returned their affection; but they were subordinates—­the receivers of his confidences and the agents of his will.  From the support and the solace of true companionship he was utterly cut off.

A friend, indeed, he had—­or rather, a mentor.  The Baron, established once more in the royal residence, was determined to work with as wholehearted a detachment for the Prince’s benefit as, more than twenty years before, he had worked for his uncle’s.  The situations then and now, similar in many respects, were yet full of differences.  Perhaps in either case the difficulties to be encountered were equally great; but the present problem was the more complex and the more interesting.  The young doctor who, unknown and insignificant, had nothing at the back of him but his own wits and the friendship of an unimportant Prince, had been replaced by the accomplished confidant of kings and ministers, ripe in years, in reputation, and in the wisdom of a vast experience.  It was possible for him to treat Albert with something of the affectionate authority of a father; but, on the other hand, Albert was no Leopold.  As the Baron was very well aware, he had none of his uncle’s rigidity of ambition, none of his overweening impulse to be personally great.  He was virtuous and well-intentioned; he was clever and well-informed; but he took no interest in politics, and there were no signs that he possessed any commanding force of character.  Left to himself,