not even read that! Stockmar also found the Prince lacking in ease and grace of manner. He admitted the Prince's many good qualities and great intelligence, but wrote, "All this, however, does not yet suffice. He must not only have great capacity, but true ambition and great strength of will. … I will watch him closely, and endeavor to become better acquainted with him. If I find that at all points there is sufficient stability in him, it becomes a matter of duty that the first step taken should be to explain to him all the difficulties of the undertaking."
It is characteristic of Stockmar that even after he was convinced that he had at first underestimated the Prince, and that it would be impossible to make a better choice of a husband for the Queen, he did not allow politics did not exclude morals; the next step after a suitable education for the Prince was that he should win the affection of the Princess, so that the marriage should be founded on a stable basis of mutual love.
Nothing could be more erroneous than to suppose that Stockmar gained his great influence with the Queen and Prince by judicious flattery. Affection and admiration he had in abundance for both of them; the Prince especially he came to love as a son; but his rule of conduct with them and with all other Royal personages was to speak out fully and frankly what was in his mind, not at all to echo what he thought was in theirs. He did not in this nor in other things act so much by instinct as by settled rule. "If you are consulted by princes to whom you are attached," he wrote to the Belgian Minister, M. Van de Weyer, "give your opinion truthfully, boldly, and without reserve. Should your opinion not be palatable, do not, to please or conciliate him, deviate for a moment from what you think the truth." It was this absolute
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