The Shadow of Great Britain

The main door outside the Green Hall slowly opened, and Van Prat, walking in in haste, came in holding a roll of documents in his arms.

”Your Majesty, Count De Meulant requests an audience.”

Leopold furrowed his brows slightly, then gave a faint nod.

He rose to his feet, set down his teacup, and said softly to his nephew, ”Albert, stay here and chat a bit more with Sir Arthur. If you need anything, just instruct the Royal Secretariat. I must first go and deal with some matters on the Cabinet’s side.”

Arthur and Albert, seeing this, also stood up and watched this King leave the Green Hall, without making any attempt to detain him.

After all, they knew that Count De Meulant was the Prime Minister of Belgium; when the Prime Minister comes rushing to seek an audience with the King in the middle of the morning, there must surely be some important business urgently awaiting resolution.

And judging from the reports Arthur had read in the Belgian newspapers over the past few days, it was quite likely to be about that 12‑million‑Francs railway construction public loan.

Once Leopold left, the Green Hall immediately fell quiet.

Outside the window, the faintly damp wind of Brussels slipped through the high slats of the shutters, gently lifting the curtains, and even caused the crystal chandelier edged with gilding inside the room to sway ever so slightly.

Arthur lowered his head to straighten his gloves; he appeared calm in expression, yet was clearly not as at ease as he had been just now when speaking with Leopold.

When all was said and done, he and Albert were, after all, not familiar with each other; there was no prejudice between them, but neither was there any bond of working together. Just now, with Leopold present as a go‑between, the two of them could still exchange a few desultory remarks; now that Leopold had left the room, embarrassment arrived uninvited.

Of course, it was not as if he had never handled such situations before, only that today he intended to leave the opportunity of breaking the awkwardness to Leopold, and in passing use it to observe the character of this candidate for British King’s Consort.

For Albert, occasions of this sort were by no means easy.

Although he had received rigorous training since childhood and was long accustomed to the palace’s elaborate etiquette, when he was faced alone with a political figure of great prestige who also enjoyed the deep trust of his cousin Victoria, this eighteen‑year‑old youth from Saxony-Coburg could not help feeling somewhat constrained.

However, once Albert recalled his uncle’s instructions from the previous night, after a brief moment of silence he still mustered his courage, raised his head, gave a light cough, and took the initiative to break the stagnant air: ”Sir Arthur, I have heard that you once served as Academic Director at the University of Gottingen? And that you also acted as an adviser to the drafting committee of the 1833 Hanover Constitution?”

Hearing that Albert had actually chosen this topic of conversation, Arthur could not help but inwardly chastise the young man for his lack of tact.

For if they followed this line of discussion, it might well branch off into the issue of the Duke of Cumberland, after succeeding as King of Hanover, intending to abolish the Constitution.

Although Arthur was very displeased with his act of abolishing the Constitution, he did not intend to criticize him publicly, nor was he willing to let anything slip even in private; after all, no good would come to him if such news were to spread. At least for the moment, he had no wish to earn a good reputation among the Liberal party.

Arthur, half intentionally and half otherwise, guided Albert: ”Yes, I did indeed serve as Academic Director at the University of Gottingen. Although it was not for long, during those more than six months, besides the University of Gottingen, I also took the opportunity to inspect quite a number of universities in Germany. I remember... Her Majesty the Queen once mentioned to me that you are a student at Bonn University, is that right?”

When Albert heard Arthur mention something familiar to him, he visibly grew more confident; he straightened his back and replied with a smile, ”Yes, I entered Bonn University last autumn, majoring in law and philosophy there. Professor Fichte is my mentor in philosophy; Professor Schlegel is responsible for giving us guidance in literature; as for Roman law and German law, those are courses taught by Professor Walter.”

It must be said that, if one judged solely by this roster of teachers, Bonn University’s faculty in law and philosophy was in no way inferior even when compared with the University of Gottingen and Berlin University.

But Arthur was certainly not here today to engage in comparisons; he merely wished to take this opportunity to determine whether Albert was the sort of character who liked to court trouble.

Seeing Arthur listening intently, Albert could not help but say a few more words, and there was even a faint trace of that distinctive youthful earnestness in his eyes: ”My favorite course is philosophy. Professor Fichte has a very particular way of teaching; unlike other professors, he does not cling to textbooks, but often gives us examples, allowing us to start from reality and guiding us to think about the relationship between the state and the individual. Once, when he spoke about ’the legitimacy of authority,’ he even specifically quoted a passage from your Göttingen Lecture on institutional ethics... You may well no longer remember that passage, but at the time I remembered it extremely clearly.”

Hearing this, Arthur could not help scratching his head.

Just as Albert had said, he truly no longer remembered what exactly he had written in the Göttingen Lecture.

As for this lecture, it was a messy account to begin with.

Though he held the chair of Professor of Electromagnetism at the University of Gottingen, he had in fact hardly given any classes on Electromagnetism during his time in Gottingen.

On the contrary, in the aftermath of the Frankfurt garrison incident, in order to reassure the students and cooperate with the Hanover Government in guiding public opinion so that they could smoothly complete the work of drafting the Constitution, Arthur had offered a course at the university titled ”Introduction to Institutions and Legitimacy.”

And in that course, all of Arthur’s arguments essentially revolved around the French Revolution, and his core thesis was nothing more than this: genuine freedom is incompatible with violence, and can only be realized through freedom achieved by peaceful, constitutionally prescribed means.