e her partially blind or wholly
complaisant. My father knew her and fenced her.

'Had I yielded,' he said, when my heart was low after the parting, 'I
should have shown her my hand. I do not choose to manage the prince that
the margravine may manage me. I pose my pride--immolate my son to it,
Richie? I hope not. No. At Vienna we shall receive an invitation to
Sarkeld for the winter, if we hear nothing of entreaties to turn aside
to Ischl at Munich. She is sure to entreat me to accompany her on her
annual visit to her territory of Rippau, which she detests; and, indeed,
there is not a vine in the length and breadth of it. She thought herself
broad awake, and I have dosed her with an opiate.'

He squeezed my fingers tenderly. I was in want both of consolation and
very delicate handling when we drove out of the little Wurtemberg town:
I had not taken any farewell from Ottilia. Baroness Turckems was already
exercising her functions of dragon. With the terrible forbidding word
'Repose' she had wafted the princess to her chamber in the evening, and
folded her inextricably round and round in the morning. The margravine
huffed, the prince icy, Ottilia invisible, I found myself shooting down
from the heights of a dream among shattered fragments of my cloud-palace
before I well knew that I had left off treading common earth. All my
selfish nature cried out to accuse Ottilia. We drove along a dusty
country road that lay like a glaring shaft of the desert between
vineyards and hills.

'There,' said my father, waving his hand where the hills on our left
fell to a distance and threw up a lofty head and neck cut with one white
line, 'your Hohenzollerns shot up there. Their castle looks like a tight
military stock. Upon my word, their native mountain has the air of a
drum major. Mr. Peterborough, have you a mind to climb it? We are at
your disposal.'

'Thank you, thank you, sir,' said the Rev. Ambrose, gazing
enthusiastically, but daunted by the heat: 'if it is your wish?'

'We have none that is not yours, Mr. Peterborough. You love ruins,
and we are adrift just now. I presume we can drive to the foot of the
ascent. I should wish my son perhaps to see the source of great houses.'

Here it was that my arm was touched by old Schwartz. He saluted stiffly,
and leaning from the saddle on the trot of his horse at an even pace
with our postillion, stretched out a bouquet of roses. I seized it
palpitating, smelt the roses, and wondered.