a difficulty in persuading himself of my father’s absolute sanity, so urgent was the fire of his eye in seconding his preposterous proposal; and, as my father invariably treated with the utmost reserve a farce played out, they never arrived at an understanding about it, beyond a sententious agreement once, in the extreme heat of an Austrian highland valley, that the option of taking a header into sea-water would there be divine.

Our yacht winged her way home.  Prince Ernest of Eppenwelzen-Sarkeld, accompanied by Baroness Turckems, and Prince Otto, his nephew, son of the Prince of Eisenberg, a captain of Austrian lancers, joined the margravine in Wurtemberg, and we felt immediately that domestic affairs were under a different management.  Baroness Turckems relieved the margravine of her guard.  She took the princess into custody.  Prince Ernest greeted us with some affability; but it was communicated to my father that he expected an apology before he could allow himself to be as absolutely unclouded toward us as the blaze of his titles.  My father declined to submit; so the prince inquired of us what our destination was.  Down the Danube to the Black Sea and Asia Minor, Greece, Egypt, the Nile, the Desert, India, possibly, and the Himalayas, my father said.  The prince bowed.  The highest personages, if they cannot travel, are conscious of a sort of airy majesty pertaining to one who can command so wide and far a flight.  We were supplicated by the margravine to appease her brother’s pride with half a word.  My father was firm.  The margravine reached her two hands to him.  He kissed over them each in turn.  They interchanged smart semi-flattering or cutting sentences.

‘Good!’ she concluded; ‘now I sulk you for five years.’

’You would decapitate me, madam, and weep over my astonished head, would you not?’

‘Upon my honour, I would,’ she shook herself to reply.

He smiled rather sadly.

‘No pathos!’ she implored him.

‘Not while I live, madam,’ said he.

At this her countenance underwent a tremour.

’And when that ends . . . friend! well, I shall have had my last laugh in the world.’

Both seemed affected.  My father murmured some soothing word.

‘Then you do mean to stay with me?’ the margravine caught him up.

‘Not in livery, your Highness.’

‘To the deuce with you!’ would be a fair translation of the exalted lady’s reply.  She railed at his insufferable pride.

‘And you were wrong, wrong,’ she pursued.  ’You offended the prince mightily:  you travestied his most noble ancestor—­’

‘In your service, may it please you.’

’You offended, offended him, I say, and you haven’t the courage to make reparation.  And when I tell you the prince is manageable as your ship, if you will only take and handle the rudder.  Do you perceive?’

She turned to me.