, I must confess,' he added, 'I am at a
loss. My wits are in the doldrums.'

He went up to Mr. Peterborough, and, with an air of great sincerity and
courtesy, requested him in French to create a diversion for her Highness
the Margravine of Rippau during the extreme heat of the afternoon by
precipitating himself headlong into forty fathoms, either attached or
unattached. His art in baffling Mr. Peterborough's attempts to treat
the unheard-of request as a jest was extraordinary. The ingenuity of
his successive pleas for pressing such a request pertinaciously upon
Mr. Peterborough in particular, his fixed eye, yet cordial deferential
manner, and the stretch of his forefinger, and argumentative turn of the
head--indicative of an armed disputant fully on the alert, and as if
it were of profound and momentous importance that he should thoroughly
defeat and convince his man--overwhelmed us. Mr. Peterborough, not being
supple in French, fell back upon his English with a flickering smile
of protestation; but even in his native tongue he could make no head
against the tremendous volubility and brief eager pauses besetting him.

The farce was too evanescent for me to reproduce it.

Peterborough turned and fled to his cabin. Half the crew were on the
broad grin. The margravine sprang to my father's arm, and 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 af