AND TUTOR TO FREDERICK THE NOBLE. 



205 



To continue in his own words : " May I proffer no affirniation 

 as long as I fail to be aware within myself of sufficient grounds 

 for my contentions. May I rather dwell in doubt till God 

 enlighten me. I shall thus best enlighten myself and be the 

 means of bearing no false light for others. Conscience is 

 nothing till it be tolerant, impersonal through love, as was 

 Christ, who suffered rather than raise a material hand to prove 

 His right. From the intellect theological knowledge should 

 pass into life and into the heart. Thus a slave, ceasing to 

 stoop before authority, may become an upright child confiding 

 in the fatherhood. Conscience, drawing us on to the good, purifies 

 by love ; and dragging us away from evil, purifies by stern 

 rebuke." 



His mother, when he went to Berlin, had laid upon herself 

 the burden of meeting his expenses ; but his prayer tliat he 

 might be enabled to meet those himself was granted. He was 

 offered some tuitional work in French. Dining on fivepence 

 and being his own shoe-black he made both ends meet as long 

 as his student days lasted. 



Madame Godet was, however, soon drawn herself to tlie 

 held of labour whither had gone her son. She was summoned, 

 in 1834, to take care of the little Prince of Prussia, Frederick 

 William, aged 3 years, who was to come to the throne for a few 

 weeks, in 1888, as Frederick the Third, Second Emperor of 

 Germany. 



At that time (1834) Frederick William was not yet actually 

 heir presumptive to the throne of Prussia. He became so in 

 1861 when his father was promoted to the throne by the death 

 of Frederick William the Fourth, whose brother he was. The 

 new King of Prussia was crowned first Emperor of Germany in 

 1871. 



Frederic Godet naturally became a visitor at his mother's 

 rooms in the Potsdam and Berlin residences of the Eoyal 

 Family. The mother of the baby prince had occasion to see 

 him. She formed views upon him for the time when her young 

 son should have outgrown petticoat government. Meanwhile, 

 and suspecting nothing, Frederic Godet left Berlin in 1835 and 

 attended lectures at Bonn. 



From that moment, his life became more and more closely 

 woven into that of the Koyal Family of Prussia, but at first 

 only through his mother, who sent him amusing " tit-bits " 

 about the baby boy in her charge. He remained quite 

 unconscious of his own future connection with that family till 

 the middle of 1838, when we find him, after undergoint)- his 



