window of icy evenings, and with
chilblainy fingers sing serenades to her on the guitar? Shall I tell
how, in a sledging-party, I had the happiness to drive her, and of
the delightful privilege which is, on these occasions, accorded to the
driver?

Any reader who has spent a winter in Germany perhaps knows it. A large
party of a score or more of sledges is formed. Away they go to some
pleasure-house that has been previously fixed upon, where a ball and
collation are prepared, and where each man, as his partner descends, has
the delicious privilege of saluting her. O heavens and earth! I may grow
to be a thousand years old, but I can never forget the rapture of that
salute.

"The keen air has given me an appetite," said the dear angel, as we
entered the supper-room; and to say the truth, fairy as she was, she
made a remarkably good meal--consuming a couple of basins of white
soup, several kinds of German sausages, some Westphalia ham, some white
puddings, an anchovy-salad made with cornichons and onions, sweets
innumerable, and a considerable quantity of old Steinwein and rum-punch
afterwards. Then she got up and danced as brisk as a fairy; in which
operation I of course did not follow her, but had the honor, at the
close of the evening's amusement, once more to have her by my side in
the sledge, as we swept in the moonlight over the snow.

Kalbsbraten is a very hospitable place as far as tea-parties are
concerned, but I never was in one where dinners were so scarce. At the
palace they occurred twice or thrice in a month; but on these occasions
spinsters were not invited, and I seldom had the opportunity of seeing
my Ottilia except at evening-parties.

Nor are these, if the truth must be told, very much to my taste. Dancing
I have forsworn, whist is too severe a study for me, and I do not like
to play ecarte with old ladies, who are sure to cheat you in the course
of an evening's play.

But to have an occasional glance at Ottilia was enough; and many and
many a napoleon did I lose to her mamma, Madame de Schlippenschlopp, for
the blest privilege of looking at her daughter. Many is the tea-party
I went to, shivering into cold clothes after dinner (which is my
abomination) in order to have one little look at the lady of my soul.

At these parties there were generally refreshments of a nature more
substantial than mere tea punch, both milk and rum, hot wine, consomme,
and a peculiar and exceedingly disagreeable sand