think, and no one could stop her, and her life in consequence was a burden to herself and to everybody else at her court.  Priscilla, however, was very silent.  She had never expressed an opinion, and the inference was that she had no opinion to express.  She had not criticized, she had not argued, she had been tractable, obedient, meek.  Yet her sisters, who had often criticized and argued, and who had rarely been obedient and never meek, became as I have said the wives of appropriate princes, while Priscilla,—­well, he who runs may read what it was that Priscilla became.

But first as to where she lived.  The Grand Duchy of Lothen-Kunitz lies in the south of Europe; that smiling region of fruitful plains, forest-clothed hills, and broad rivers.  It is one of the first places Spring stops at on her way up from Italy; and Autumn, coming down from the north sunburnt, fruit-laden, and blest, goes slowly when she reaches it, lingering there with her serenity and ripeness, her calm skies and her windless days long after the Saxons and Prussians have lit their stoves and got out their furs.  There figs can be eaten off the trees in one’s garden, and vineyards glow on the hillsides.  There the people are Catholics, and the Protestant pastor casts no shadow of a black gown across life.  There as you walk along the white roads, you pass the image of the dead Christ by the wayside; mute reminder to those who would otherwise forget of the beauty of pitifulness and love.  And there, so near is Kunitz to the soul of things, you may any morning get into the train after breakfast and in the afternoon find yourself drinking coffee in the cool colonnades of the Piazza San Marco at Venice.

Kunitz is the capital of the duchy, and the palace is built on a hill.  It is one of those piled-up buildings of many windows and turrets and battlements on which the tourist gazes from below as at the realization of a childhood’s dream.  A branch of the river Loth winds round the base of the hill, separating the ducal family from the red-roofed town along its other bank.  Kunitz stretches right round the hill, lying clasped about its castle like a necklet of ancient stones.  At the foot of the castle walls the ducal orchards and kitchen gardens begin, continuing down to the water’s edge and clothing the base of the hill in a garment of blossom and fruit.  No fairer sight is to be seen than the glimpse of these grey walls and turrets rising out of a cloud of blossom to be had by him who shall stand in the market place of Kunitz and look eastward up the narrow street on a May morning; and if he who gazes is a dreamer he could easily imagine that where the setting of life is so lovely its days must of necessity be each like a jewel, of perfect brightness and beauty.