But as the Prince and I drove furiously through, like pursuer and pursued, the busy streets cleared themselves in a twinkling; and we rode through lanes of faces yellow in the lamplight, or in the darker places like blurs of scrabbled whiteness.  So I leaned forward and let the beast take his chance of uneven causeway and open sewer.  I expected nothing less than a broken neck, and for at least half a mile, as we flew upward to the castle, I think that the certainty of naught worse than a broken arm would positively have pleasured me.  At least, I would very willingly have compounded my chances for that.

Presently, without ever drawing rein, we flew beneath the dark outer port of the castle, clattered through a court paved with slippery blocks of stone, thundered over a noble drawbridge, plunged into a long and gloomy archway, and finally came out in a bright inner palace court with lamps lit all about it.

I was at the Prince’s bridle ere he could dismount.

“You can ride, Captain Hugo Gottfried!” he said.  “I think I will make you my orderly officer.”

And so he went within, without a word more of praise or welcome.

There came past just at that moment an ancient councillor clad in a long robe of black velvet, with broad facings and rosettes of scarlet.  He was carrying a roll of papers in his hand.

“What said the Prince to yon, young sir, if I may ask without offence?” said he, looking at me with a curiously sly, upward glance out of the corner of his eye, as if he suspected me of a fixed intention to tell him a lie in any case.

“If it be any satisfaction to you to know,” answered I, rather piqued at his tone, “the Prince informed me that I could ride, and that he intended to make me his orderly officer.  And he called me not ‘young sir,’ but Captain Hugo Gottfried.”

“How long has he known you?” said the Chief Councillor of State.  For so by his habit I knew him to be.

“Half an hour, or thereby,” answered I.

“God help this kingdom!” cried the old man, tripping off, flirting his hand hopelessly in the air—­“if he had known you only ten minutes you would have been either Prime-Minister or Commander-in-Chief of the army.”

It was in this strange fashion that I entered the army of the Prince of Plassenburg, a service which I shall ever look back upon with gratitude, and count as having brought me all the honors and most of the pleasures of my life.

Half an hour or so afterwards the blowing of trumpets and the thunder of the new leathern cannon announced that the Princess and her train were entering the palace.  The Prince came down to greet them on the threshold in a new and magnificent dress.

“The Prince’s officer-in-waiting to attend upon his Highness!” cried a herald in fine raiment of blue and yellow.

I looked about for the man who was to be my superior in my new office—­that is, if Prince Karl should prove to have spoken in earnest.