Left to himself, he would almost certainly have subsided into a high-minded nonentity, an aimless dilettante busy over culture, a palace appendage without influence or power.

But he was not left to himself: Stockmar saw to that.

For ever at his pupil's elbow, the hidden Baron pushed him forward, with tireless pressure, along the path which had been trod by Leopold so many years ago.

But, this time, the goal at the end of it was something more than the mediocre royalty that Leopold had reached.

The prize which Stockmar, with all the energy of disinterested devotion, had determined should be Albert's was a tremendous prize indeed.
The beginning of the undertaking proved to be the most arduous part of it.