d entreated him
to be her guest in her Austrian mountain summer-seat. Ottilia was now her
darling and her comfort. Whether we English youth sucked our thumbs, or
sighed furiously, she had evidently ceased to care. Mr. Peterborough
assured me at night that he had still a difficulty in persuading himself
of my father's absolute sanity, so urgent was the fire of his eye in
seconding his preposterous proposal; and, as my father invariably treated
with the utmost reserve a farce played out, they never arrived at an
understanding about it, beyond a sententious agreement once, in the
extreme heat of an Austrian highland valley, that the option of taking a
header into sea-water would there be divine.

Our yacht winged her way home. Prince Ernest of Eppenwelzen-Sarkeld,
accompanied by Baroness Turckems, and Prince Otto, his nephew, son of the
Prince of Eisenberg, a captain of Austrian lancers, joined the margravine
in Wurtemberg, and we felt immediately that domestic affairs were under a
different management. Baroness Turckems relieved the margravine of her
guard. She took the princess into custody. Prince Ernest greeted us with
some affability; but it was communicated to my father that he expected an
apology before he could allow himself to be as absolutely unclouded
toward us as the blaze of his titles. My father declined to submit; so
the prince inquired of us what our destination was. Down the Danube to
the Black Sea and Asia Minor, Greece, Egypt, the Nile, the Desert, India,
possibly, and the Himalayas, my father said. The prince bowed. The
highest personages, if they cannot travel, are conscious of a sort of
airy majesty pertaining to one who can command so wide and far a flight.
We were supplicated by the margravine to appease her brother's pride with
half a word. My father was firm. The margravine reached her two hands to
him. He kissed over them each in turn. They interchanged smart
semi-flattering or cutting sentences.

'Good!' she concluded; 'now I sulk you for five years.'

'You would decapitate me, madam, and weep over my astonished head, would
you not?'

'Upon my honour, I would,' she shook herself to reply.

He smiled rather sadly.

'No pathos!' she implored him.

'Not while I live, madam,' said he.

At this her countenance underwent a tremour.

'And when that ends . . . friend! well, I shall have had my last laugh in
the world.'

Both seemed affected. My father murmured some soothing word.

'Then yo