I shook my head.

The Princess Ottilia translated, ’Her Highness, my good aunt, would know, would you know him, did you see him?’

‘Yes, anywhere,’ I cried.

The margravine pushed me back with a gesture.

‘Yes, your Highness, on my honour; anywhere on earth!’

She declined to hear the translation.

Her insulting disbelief in my ability to recognize the father I had come so far to embrace would have vexed me but for the wretched thought that I was losing him again.  We threaded the carriages; gazed at the horsemen in a way to pierce the hair on their faces.  The little princess came on us hurriedly.

’Here, see, are the horses.  I will you to mount.  Are they not pretty animals?’ She whispered, ’I believe your fater have been hurt in his mind by something.  It is only perhaps.  Now mount, for de Markgrafin says you are our good guests.’

We mounted simply to show that we could mount, for we would rather have been on foot, and drew up close to the right of the margravine’s carriage.

‘Hush! a poet is reading his ode,’ said the princess.  ’It is Count Fretzel von Wolfenstein.’

This ode was dreadful to us, and all the Court people pretended they liked it.  When he waved his right hand toward the statue there was a shout from the rustic set; when he bowed to the margravine, the ladies and gentlemen murmured agreeably and smiled.  We were convinced of its being downright hypocrisy, rustic stupidity, Court flattery.  We would have argued our case, too.  I proposed a gallop; Temple said,

’No, we’ll give the old statue our cheer as soon as this awful fellow has done.  I don’t care much for poetry, but don’t let me ever have to stand and hear German poetry again for the remainder of my life.’

We could not imagine why they should have poetry read out to them instead of their fine band playing, but supposed it was for the satisfaction of the margravine, with whom I grew particularly annoyed on hearing Miss Sibley say she conceived her Highness to mean that my father was actually on the ground, and that we neither of us, father and son, knew one another.  I swore on my honour, on my life, he was not present; and the melancholy in my heart taking the form of extreme irritation, I spoke passionately.  I rose in my stirrups, ready to shout, ’Father! here’s Harry Richmond come to see you.  Where are you!’ I did utter something—­ a syllable or two:  ‘Make haste!’ I think the words were.  They sprang from my inmost bosom, addressed without forethought to that drawling mouthing poet.  The margravine’s face met mine like a challenge.  She had her lips tight in a mere lip-smile, and her eyes gleamed with provocation.

‘Her Highness,’ Miss Sibley translated, ’asks whether you are prepared to bet that your father is not on the ground?’

‘Beg her to wait two minutes, and I’ll be prepared to bet any sum,’ said I.