PART II.

CHAPTER I.

The Baron Rudolf von Blitzenberg sat by himself at a table in the
dining-room of the Hotel Mayonaise, which, as everybody knows, is the
largest and most expensive in London. He was a young man of a florid and
burly Teutonic type and the most ingenuous countenance. Being possessed of
a curious and enterprising disposition, as well as the most ample means,
he had left his ancestral castle in Bavaria to study for a few months the
customs and politics of England. In the language he was already
proficient, and he had promised himself an amusing as well as an
instructive visit. But, although he had only arrived in London that
morning, he was already beginning to feel an uncomfortable apprehension
lest in both respects he should be disappointed. Though his introductions
were the best with which the British Ambassador could supply him, they
were only three or four in number,--for, not wishing to be hampered with
too many acquaintances, he had rather chosen quality than quantity: and
now, in the course of the afternoon, he had found to his chagrin that in
every case the families were out of town. In fact, so far as he could
learn, they were not even at their own country seats. One was abroad,
another gone to the seaside to recover from the mumps, or a third paying a
round of visits.

The disappointment was sharp, he felt utterly at sea as to what he should
do, and he was already beginning to experience the loneliness of a single
mortal in a crowded hotel.

As the frosty evening was setting in and the shops were being lit, he had
strolled out into the streets in the vague hope of meeting some strange
foreign adventure, or perhaps even happily lighting upon some
half-forgotten diplomatic acquaintance. But he found the pavements crowded
with a throng who took no notice of him at all, but seemed every man and
most women of them to be pushing steadily, and generally silently, towards
a million mysterious goals. Not that he could tell they were silent except
by their set lips, for the noise of wheels and horses on so many hundreds
of miles of streets, and the cries of busmen and vendors of evening
papers, made such a hubbub that he felt before long in a maze. He lost his
way four times, and was patronisingly set right by beneficent policemen;
and at last, feeling like a man who has fallen off a precipice on to a
soft place--none the worse b