'physician-in-ordinary' and the journalists, too, and the Prince's suite to boot. He's not a king, after all."
"A railway king, so far as I know," remarked Albrecht quietly with eyes downcast.
"Not only, nor even particularly, a railway king, Royal Highness, according to what I hear. Over in America they have those great business concerns called Trusts, as your Royal Highness knows—the Steel Trust for instance, the Sugar Trust, the Petroleum Trust, the Coal, Meat, and Tobacco Trusts, and goodness knows how many more, and Samuel N. Spoelmann has a finger in nearly all these trusts, and is chief shareholder in them, and managing director—that's what I believe they call them—so his business must be what is called over here a 'Mixed Goods Business.'"
"A nice sort of business," said Ditlinde, "it must be a nice sort of business! For you can't persuade me, dear Jettchen, that honest work can make a man into a Leviathan and a Crœsus. I am convinced that his riches are steeped in the blood of widows and orphans. What do you think, Albrecht?"
"I hope so, Ditlinde, I hope so, for your own and your husband's comfort."
"May be so," explained Jettchen, "yet Spoelmann—our Samuel N. Spoelmann—is hardly responsible for it, for he is really nothing but an heir, and may quite well not have had any particular taste for his business. It was his father who really made the pile, I've read all about it, and may say that I really know the general facts. His father was a German—simply an adventurer who crossed the seas and became gold-digger. And he was lucky and made a little money through gold-finds—or rather quite a decent amount of money—and began to speculate in petroleum and steel and railways, and then in every sort of thing, and kept growing richer and richer, and when he died everything was already in full swing, and his son Samuel, who
