I became a perfectly mechanical creature:  incapable, of observing, just capable of taking an impression here and there; and in such cases the impressions that come are stamped on hot wax; they keep the scene fresh; they partly pervert it as well.  Temple’s version is, I am sure, the truer historical picture.  He, however, could never repeat it twice exactly alike, whereas I failed not to render image for image in clear succession as they had struck me at the time.  I could perceive that the figure of the Prince Albrecht, in its stiff condition, was debarred from vaulting, or striding, or stooping, so that the ropes were a barrier between us.  I saw the little Princess Ottilia eyeing us with an absorbed comprehensive air quite unlike the manner of a child.  Dots of heads, curious faces, peering and starting eyes, met my vision.  I heard sharp talk in German, and a rider flung his arm, as if he wished to crash the universe, and flew off.  The margravine seemed to me more an implacable parrot than a noble lady.  I thought to myself:  This is my father, and I am not overjoyed or grateful.  In the same way, I felt that the daylight was bronze, and I did not wonder at it:  nay, I reasoned on the probability of a composition of sun and mould producing that colour.  The truth was, the powers of my heart and will were frozen; I thought and felt at random.  And I crave excuses for dwelling on such trifling phenomena of the sensations, which have been useful to me by helping me to realize the scene, even as at the time they obscured it.

According to Temple’s description, when the statue moved its head toward him, a shudder went through the crowd, and a number of forefingers were levelled at it, and the head moved toward me, marked of them all.  Its voice was answered by a dull puling scream from women, and the men gaped.  When it descended from the saddle, the act was not performed with one bound, as I fancied, but difficultly; and it walked up to me like a figure dragging logs at its heels.  Half-a-dozen workmen ran to arrest it; some townswomen fainted.  There was a heavy altercation in German between the statue and the superintendent of the arrangements.  The sun shone brilliantly on our march to the line of carriages where the Prince of Eppenwelzen was talking to the margravine in a fury, and he dashed away on his horse, after bellowing certain directions to his foresters and the workmen, by whom we were surrounded; while the margravine talked loudly and amiably, as though everything had gone well.  Her watch was out.  She acknowledged my father’s bow, and overlooked him.  She seemed to have made her courtiers smile.  The ladies and gentlemen obeyed the wave of her hand by quitting the ground; the band headed a long line of the commoner sort, and a body of foresters gathered the remnants and joined them to the rear of the procession.  A liveried groom led away Temple’s horse and mine.  Temple declared he could not sit after seeing the statue descend from its pedestal.