ntolerable roads, fresh trout for supper in the
clean bare chamber of an inn, and the song of birds and the music of the
village-bells--these were the recollections of the Grunewald tourist.

North and east the foothills of Grunewald sank with varying profile into
a vast plain. On these sides many small states bordered with the
principality, Gerolstein, an extinct grand duchy, among the number. On
the south it marched with the comparatively powerful kingdom of Seaboard
Bohemia, celebrated for its flowers and mountain bears, and inhabited by
a people of singular simplicity and tenderness of heart. Several
intermarriages had, in the course of centuries, united the crowned
families of Grunewald and Maritime Bohemia; and the last Prince of
Grunewald, whose history I purpose to relate, drew his descent through
Perdita, the only daughter of King Florizel the First of Bohemia. That
these intermarriages had in some degree mitigated the rough, manly stock
of the first Grunewalds, was an opinion widely held within the borders of
the principality. The charcoal burner, the mountain sawyer, the wielder
of the broad axe among the congregated pines of Grunewald, proud of their
hard hands, proud of their shrewd ignorance and almost savage lore,
looked with an unfeigned contempt on the soft character and manners of
the sovereign race.

The precise year of grace in which this tale begins shall be left to the
conjecture of the reader. But for the season of the year (which, in such
a story, is the more important of the two) it was already so far forward
in the spring, that when mountain people heard horns echoing all day
about the north-west corner of the principality, they told themselves
that Prince Otto and his hunt were up and out for the last time till the
return of autumn.

At this point the borders of Grunewald descend somewhat steeply, here and
there breaking into crags; and this shaggy and trackless country stands
in a bold contrast to the cultivated plain below. It was traversed at
that period by two roads alone; one, the imperial highway, bound to
Brandenau in Gerolstein, descended the slope obliquely and by the easiest
gradients. The other ran like a fillet across the very forehead of the
hills, dipping into savage gorges, and wetted by the spray of tiny
waterfalls. Once it passed beside a certain tower or castle, built sheer
upon the margin of a formidable cliff, and commanding a vast prospect of
the skirts of Grune