fancying a prince like a prince in a
Christmas pantomime--a burlesque prince with twopence-halfpenny for a
revenue, jolly and irascible, a prime-minister-kicking prince, fed upon
fabulous plum-puddings and enormous pasteboard joints, by cooks and
valets with large heads which never alter their grin. Not that this
portrait is from the life. Perhaps he has no life. Perhaps there is no
prince in the great white tower, that we see for miles before we enter
the little town. Perhaps he has been mediatized, and sold his kingdom
to Monsieur Lenoir. Before the palace of Lenoir there is a grove of
orange-trees in tubs, which Lenoir bought from another German prince;
who went straightway and lost the money, which he had been paid for his
wonderful orange-trees, over Lenoir's green tables, at his roulette and
trente-et-quarante. A great prince is Lenoir in his way; a generous and
magnanimous prince. You may come to his feast and pay nothing, unless
you please. You may walk in his gardens, sit in his palace, and read
his thousand newspapers. You may go and play at whist in his small
drawing-rooms, or dance and hear concerts in his grand saloon--and there
is not a penny to pay. His fiddlers and trumpeters begin trumpeting and
fiddling for you at the early dawn--they twang and blow for you in the
afternoon, they pipe for you at night that you may dance--and there is
nothing to pay--Lenoir pays for all. Give him but the chances of the
table, and he will do all this and more. It is better to live under
Prince Lenoir than a fabulous old German Durchlaucht whose cavalry ride
wicker horses with petticoats, and whose prime minister has a great
pasteboard head. Vive le Prince Lenoir!

There is a grotesque old carved gate to the palace of the Durchlaucht,
from which you could expect none but a pantomime procession to pass.
The place looks asleep; the courts are grass-grown and deserted. Is
the Sleeping Beauty lying yonder, in the great white tower? What is the
little army about? It seems a sham army: a sort of grotesque military.
The only charge of infantry was this: one day when passing through the
old town, looking for sketches. Perhaps they become croupiers at night.
What can such a fabulous prince want with anything but a sham army?
My favorite walk was in the ancient quarter of the town--the dear old
fabulous quarter, away from the noisy actualities of life and Prince
Lenoir's new palace--out of eye and earshot of the dandies and the
la