No doubt his face said what he wished; for a lovely little lady, all in pink and gold and white, with powdered hair, and high-heeled shoes, and all made of the very finest and fairest Meissen china, tripped up to him, and smiled, and gave him her hand, and led him out to a minuet.  And he danced it perfectly—­poor little August in his thick, clumsy shoes, and his thick, clumsy sheepskin jacket, and his rough homespun linen, and his broad Tyrolean hat!  He must have danced it perfectly, this dance of kings and queens in days when crowns were duly honoured, for the lovely lady always smiled benignly and never scolded him at all, and danced so divinely herself to the stately measures the spinet was playing that August could not take his eyes off her till, the minuet ended, she sat down on her own white-and-gold bracket.

“I am the Princess of Saxe-Royal,” she said to him, with a benignant smile; “and you have got through that minuet very fairly.”

Then he ventured to say to her: 

“Madame my princess, could you tell me kindly why some of the figures and furniture dance and speak, and some lie up in a corner like lumber?  It does make me curious.  Is it rude to ask?”

For it greatly puzzled him why, when some of the bric-a-brac was all full of life and motion, some was quite still and had not a single thrill in it.

“My dear child,” said the powdered lady, “is it possible that you do not know the reason?  Why, those silent, dull things are imitation.”

This she said with so much decision that she evidently considered it a condensed but complete answer.

“Imitation?” repeated August, timidly, not understanding.

“Of course!  Lies, falsehoods, fabrications!” said the princess in pink shoes, very vivaciously.  “They only pretend to be what we are!  They never wake up:  how can they?  No imitation ever had any soul in it yet.”

“Oh!” said August, humbly, not even sure that he understood entirely yet.  He looked at Hirschvogel:  surely it had a royal soul within it:  would it not wake up and speak?  Oh dear! how he longed to hear the voice of his fire-king!  And he began to forget that he stood by a lady who sat upon a pedestal of gold-and-white china, with the year 1746 cut on it, and the Meissen mark.

“What will you be when you are a man?” said the little lady, sharply, for her black eyes were quick though her red lips were smiling.  “Will you work for the Konigliche Porcellan-Manufactur, like my great dead Kandler?”

“I have never thought,” said August, stammering; “at least—­that is—­I do wish—­I do hope to be a painter, as was Master Augustin Hirschvogel at Nuernberg.”

“Bravo!” said all the real bric-a-brac in one breath, and the two Italian rapiers left off fighting to cry, “Benone!” For there is not a bit of true bric-a-brac in all Europe that does not know the names of the mighty masters.