t, in its stiff condition, was debarred from vaulting,
or striding, or stooping, so that the ropes were a barrier between us. I
saw the little Princess Ottilia eyeing us with an absorbed comprehensive
air quite unlike the manner of a child. Dots of heads, curious faces,
peering and starting eyes, met my vision. I heard sharp talk in German,
and a rider flung his arm, as if he wished to crash the universe, and
flew off. The margravine seemed to me more an implacable parrot than a
noble lady. I thought to myself: This is my father, and I am not
overjoyed or grateful. In the same way, I felt that the daylight was
bronze, and I did not wonder at it: nay, I reasoned on the probability of
a composition of sun and mould producing that colour. The truth was, the
powers of my heart and will were frozen; I thought and felt at random.
And I crave excuses for dwelling on such trifling phenomena of the
sensations, which have been useful to me by helping me to realize the
scene, even as at the time they obscured it.

According to Temple's description, when the statue moved its head toward
him, a shudder went through the crowd, and a number of forefingers were
levelled at it, and the head moved toward me, marked of them all. Its
voice was answered by a dull puling scream from women, and the men gaped.
When it descended from the saddle, the act was not performed with one
bound, as I fancied, but difficultly; and it walked up to me like a
figure dragging logs at its heels. Half-a-dozen workmen ran to arrest it;
some townswomen fainted. There was a heavy altercation in German between
the statue and the superintendent of the arrangements. The sun shone
brilliantly on our march to the line of carriages where the Prince of
Eppenwelzen was talking to the margravine in a fury, and he dashed away
on his horse, after bellowing certain directions to his foresters and the
workmen, by whom we were surrounded; while the margravine talked loudly
and amiably, as though everything had gone well. Her watch was out. She
acknowledged my father's bow, and overlooked him. She seemed to have made
her courtiers smile. The ladies and gentlemen obeyed the wave of her hand
by quitting the ground; the band headed a long line of the commoner sort,
and a body of foresters gathered the remnants and joined them to the rear
of the procession. A liveried groom led away Temple's horse and mine.
Temple declared he could not sit after seeing the statue descend from its
pe