“Do so, your Electoral Highness,” pleaded the count, softly and quickly.  “Grant the people the light of your countenance.”

“Well, so be it, then,” sighed George William.  “Call the servants, Charlotte Louise, that they may roll me to the window.”

“As if I could not have the privilege of acting as servant to your highness, and as if my arm were not strong enough to guide your highness’s chair.  Permit me, gracious sir, to roll you to the window.”

“And permit me to help your excellency,” said Princess Charlotte Louise, smiling, while she seized one of the arms of the fauteuil.

“Now truly this is a very lofty equipage,” cried George William, as the fauteuil rolled along through the spacious apartment.  “The Stadtholder in the Mark and a Princess of the blood drawing my equipage.”

“But what a man sits in it!” said Count Schwarzenberg.  “A duke of Prussia, of Pomerania, of Cleves, an Elector of Brandenburg, and—­”

“Hurrah, hurrah!” sounded up from below in a chorus of hundreds of voices.  “Hurrah! long live the Electoral Prince!”

“He comes!  Oh, my son, my son!” cried the Electress.  “He comes!  George, our son—­”

She had turned round and her eye met the count’s gaze, who immediately bowed low and reverentially before her.  The Electress only thanked him with a slight nod of her head, and herself sprang forward to push the fauteuil into the window niche.  Then, with trembling hands, she opened both window shutters and beckoned her daughters to her side.

“He must see us all, all” she said.  “With one glance he must take in father, mother, and sisters.”

“And my most faithful and best-beloved servant, the Stadtholder in the Mark!” cried the Elector.  “Come, Adam, place yourself close beside me, that the picture may be complete, and my son may see us all at once.”

Boundless public rejoicings seemed to be in progress below; a loud, long-sustained, ever-renewed cheering rolled over the square like the roar of the sea.

“My son, my beloved son!” cried the Electress, leaning far out of the window and stretching out both arms toward the young man, who had just emerged from the shrubbery, on horseback and followed by a brilliant train.

“Brother, dear brother!” called out the two Princesses, leaning out of the other side of the window, and waving their handkerchiefs in token of welcome.  Behind them sat the Elector in his great armchair, quite forgotten and quite hidden from view by his wife and daughters, not at all visible to either the people or his son.

“I shall remember this hour, oh! to be sure, I shall remember it,” he said, with trembling lips; “my son shall atone to me for this hour of shame and mortification.  I—­”

The huzzaing and shouting below drowned his words; they came pouring in at the open window like the pealing tones of an organ, like the roar of the sea, like claps of thunder.