George and Blue-Boar of
Dummerland, Excellency, and High Chancellor of the United Duchies, lived
in the second floor of a house in the Schwapsgasse; where, with his
private income and his revenues as Chancellor, amounting together to
some 300L. per annum, he maintained such a state as very few other
officers of the Grand-Ducal Crown could exhibit. The Baron is married to
Marie Antoinette, a Countess of the house of Kartoffelstadt, branches
of which have taken root all over Germany. He has no sons, and but one
daughter, the Fraulein OTTILIA.

The Chancellor is a worthy old gentleman, too fat and wheezy to preside
at the Privy Council, fond of his pipe, his ease, and his rubber. His
lady is a very tall and pale Roman-nosed Countess, who looks as gentle
as Mrs. Robert Roy, where, in the novel, she is for putting Baillie
Nicol Jarvie into the lake, and who keeps the honest Chancellor in the
greatest order. The Fraulein Ottilia had not arrived at Kalbsbraten when
the little affair between me and Dorothea was going on; or rather had
only just come in for the conclusion of it, being presented for the
first time that year at the ball where I--where I met with my accident.

At the time when the Countess was young, it was not the fashion in her
country to educate the young ladies so highly as since they have been
educated; and provided they could waltz, sew, and make puddings, they
were thought to be decently bred; being seldom called upon for algebra
or Sanscrit in the discharge of the honest duties of their lives. But
Fraulein Ottilia was of the modern school in this respect, and came back
from the pension at Strasburg speaking all the languages, dabbling in
all the sciences: an historian, a poet,--a blue of the ultramarinest
sort, in a word. What a difference there was, for instance, between
poor, simple Dorothea's love of novel reading and the profound
encyclopaedic learning of Ottilia!

Before the latter arrived from Strasburg (where she had been under the
care of her aunt the canoness, Countess Ottilia of Kartoffeldstadt, to
whom I here beg to offer my humblest respects), Dorothea had passed for
a bel esprit in the little court circle, and her little simple stock
of accomplishments had amused us all very well. She used to sing "Herz,
mein Herz" and "T'en souviens-tu," in a decent manner (ONCE, before
heaven, I thought her singing better than Grisi's), and then she had a
little album in which she drew flowers, and used to