Temple's remark was, that he wished she and all her family had been
English. Nothing was left for me to say but that the margravine almost
made us wish we had been German.

Smiling cordially, the margravine spoke, Miss Sibley translated:

'Her Royal Highness asks you if you have seen your father?'

I shook my head.

The Princess Ottilia translated, 'Her Highness, my good aunt, would
know, would you know him, did you see him?'

'Yes, anywhere,' I cried.

The margravine pushed me back with a gesture.

'Yes, your Highness, on my honour; anywhere on earth!'

She declined to hear the translation.

Her insulting disbelief in my ability to recognize the father I had come
so far to embrace would have vexed me but for the wretched thought that
I was losing him again. We threaded the carriages; gazed at the horsemen
in a way to pierce the hair on their faces. The little princess came on
us hurriedly.

'Here, see, are the horses. I will you to mount. Are they not pretty
animals?' She whispered, 'I believe your fater have been hurt in his
mind by something. It is only perhaps. Now mount, for de Markgrafin says
you are our good guests.'

We mounted simply to show that we could mount, for we would rather
have been on foot, and drew up close to the right of the margravine's
carriage.

'Hush! a poet is reading his ode,' said the princess. 'It is Count
Fretzel von Wolfenstein.'

This ode was dreadful to us, and all the Court people pretended they
liked it. When he waved his right hand toward the statue there was a
shout from the rustic set; when he bowed to the margravine, the ladies
and gentlemen murmured agreeably and smiled. We were convinced of its
being downright hypocrisy, rustic stupidity, Court flattery. We would
have argued our case, too. I proposed a gallop; Temple said,

'No, we'll give the old statue our cheer as soon as this awful fellow
has done. I don't care much for poetry, but don't let me ever have to
stand and hear German poetry again for the remainder of my life.'

We could not imagine why they should have poetry read out to them
instead of their fine band playing, but supposed it was for the
satisfaction of the margravine, with whom I grew particularly annoyed
on hearing Miss Sibley say she conceived her Highness to mean that my
father was actually on the ground, and that we neither of us, father
and son, knew one another. I swore on my honour, on my life, he was
not present; and the melancholy in