At a turning of the ascent she pointed her whip at the dark knots and lines of the multitude mounting by various paths to behold the ceremony of unveiling the monument.

I besought her to waste no time.

‘You must, if you please, attend my pleasure, if I guide you,’ she said, tossing her chin.

‘I thank you, I can’t tell you how much, mademoiselle,’ said I.

She answered:  ‘You were kind to my two pet lambs, sir.’

So we moved forward.

CHAPTER XVI

THE STATUE ON THE PROMONTORY

The little lady was soon bowing to respectful salutations from crowds of rustics and others on a broad carriage-way circling level with the height.  I could not help thinking how doubly foreign I was to all the world here—­I who was about to set eyes on my lost living father, while these people were tip-toe to gaze on a statue.  But as my father might also be taking an interest in the statue, I got myself round to a moderate sentiment of curiosity and a partial share of the general excitement.  Temple and mademoiselle did most of the conversation, which related to glimpses of scenery, pine, oak, beech-wood, and lake-water, until we gained the plateau where the tower stood, when the giant groom trotted to the front, and worked a clear way for us through a mass of travelling sight-seers, and she leaned to me, talking quite inaudibly amid the laughter and chatting.  A band of wind instruments burst out.  ‘This is glorious!’ I conceived Temple to cry like an open-mouthed mute.  I found it inspiriting.

The rush of pride and pleasure produced by the music was irresistible.  We marched past the tower, all of us, I am sure, with splendid feelings.  A stone’s throw beyond it was the lofty tent; over it drooped a flag, and flags were on poles round a wide ring of rope guarded by foresters and gendarmes, mounted and afoot.  The band, dressed in green, with black plumes to their hats, played in the middle of the ring.  Outside were carriages, and ladies and gentlemen on horseback, full of animation; rustics, foresters, town and village people, men, women, and children, pressed against the ropes.  It was a day of rays of sunshine, now from off one edge, now from another of large slow clouds, so that at times we and the tower were in a blaze; next the lake-palace was illuminated, or the long grey lake and the woods of pine and of bare brown twigs making bays in it.

Several hands beckoned on our coming in sight of the carriages.  ’There he is, then!’ I thought; and it was like swallowing my heart in one solid lump.  Mademoiselle had free space to trot ahead of us.  We saw a tall-sitting lady, attired in sables, raise a finger to her, and nip her chin.  Away the little lady flew to a second carriage, and on again, as one may when alive with an inquiry.  I observed to Temple, ’I wonder whether she says in her German, “It is my question”; do you remember?’ There was no weight whatever in what I said or thought.