feed the popular impatience.  Music is heard in the distance, and a procession with colored banners is seen approaching from the city.  That, like everything else that is to come, stops beyond the closed gate; and there it halts, ready to stream down before our eyes in a variegated pageant.  The time goes on; the crowd gets denser, for there have been steady rivers of people pouring into the grounds for more than an hour.

The military bands play in the long interval; the peasants jabber in unintelligible dialects; the high functionaries on the royal stand are good enough to move around, and let us see how brave and majestic they are.

At last the firing of cannon announces the coming of royalty.  There is a commotion in the vast crowd yonder, the eagerly watched gates swing wide, and a well-mounted company of cavalry dashes down the turf, in uniforms of light blue and gold.  It is a citizens’ company of butchers and bakers and candlestick-makers, which would do no discredit to the regular army.  Driving close after is a four-horse carriage with two of the king’s ministers; and then, at a rapid pace, six coal-black horses in silver harness, with mounted postilions, drawing a long, slender, open carriage with one seat, in which ride the king and his brother, Prince Otto, come down the way, and are pulled up in front of the pavilion; while the cannon roars, the big bells ring, all the flags of Bavaria, Prussia, and Austria, on innumerable poles, are blowing straight out, the band plays “God save the King,” the people break into enthusiastic shouting, and the young king, throwing off his cloak, rises and stands in his carriage for a moment, bowing right and left before he descends.  He wears to-day the simple uniform of the citizens’ company which has escorted him, and is consequently more plainly and neatly dressed than any one else on the platform,—­a tall (say six feet), slender, gallant-looking young fellow of three and twenty, with an open face and a graceful manner.

But, when he has arrived, things again come to a stand; and we wait for an hour, and watch the thickening of the clouds, while the king goes from this to that delighted dignitary on the stand and converses.  At the end of this time, there is a movement.  A white dog has got into the course, and runs up and down between the walls of people in terror, headed off by soldiers at either side of the grand stand, and finally, becoming desperate, he makes a dive for the royal pavilion.  The consternation is extreme.  The people cheer the dog and laugh:  a white-handed official, in gold lace, and without his hat, rushes out to “shoo” the dog away, but is unsuccessful; for the animal dashes between his legs, and approaches the royal and carpeted steps.  More men of rank run at him, and he is finally captured and borne away; and we all breathe freer that the danger to royalty is averted.  At one o’clock six youths in white jackets, with clubs and coils of rope, had stationed themselves by the pavilion, but they did not go into action at this juncture; and I thought they rather enjoyed the activity of the great men who kept off the dog.