midnight
`` Think of your good fortune . A moment ago you imagined a thousand thalers were lost . Now it is but five hundred thalers invested , and you are a partner with the Royal House of the Empire . '' Up to the time of his midnight awakening , Prince Roland had led a care-free , uneventful life . Although he received the general education supposed to be suitable for a youth of his station , he interested himself keenly in only two studies , but as one of these challenged the other , as it were , the result was entirely to the good . He was a very quiet boy , much under the influence of his mother , seeing little or nothing of his easy-going , inebriated father . It was his mother who turned her son 's attention towards the literature of his country , and he became an omnivorous reader of the old monkish manuscripts with which the Palace was well supplied .