His absence relieved me in spite of my renewed pleasure in his talk; I may call it a thirsty craving to have him inflating me, puffing the deep unillumined treasure-pits of my nature with laborious hints, as mines are filled with air to keep the miners going.  While he talked he made these inmost recesses habitable.  But the pain lay in my having now and then to utter replies.  The task of speaking was hateful.  I found a sweetness in brooding unrealizingly over hopes and dreams and possibilities, and I let him go gladly that I might enjoy a week of silence, just taking impressions as they came, like the sands in the ebb-tide.  The impression of the morning was always enough for a day’s meditation.  The green colour and the crimson athwart it, and higher up the pinky lights, flamingo feathers, on a warm half-circle of heaven, in hue between amethyst and milky opal; then the rim of the sun’s disc not yet severe; and then the monstrous shadow of tall Schwartz darting at me along the sand, then the princess.  This picture, seen at sunrise, lasted till I slept.  It stirred no thoughts, conjured no images, it possessed me.  In the afternoon the margravine accompanied the princess to a point facing seaward, within hearing of the military band.  She did me the favour to tell me that she tolerated me until I should become efficient in German to amuse her, but the dulness of the Belgian city compared with her lively German watering-places compelled her to try my powers of fun in French, and in French I had to do duty, and failed in my office.

‘Do you know,’ said she, ’that your honourable papa is one in a million?  He has the life of a regiment in his ten fingers.  What astonishes me is that he does not make fury in that England of yours—­that Lapland!  Je ne puffs me passer de cet homme!  He offends me, he trifles, he outrages, he dares permit himself to be indignant.  Bon! we part, and absence pleads for him with the eloquence of Satan.  I am his victim.  Does he, then, produce no stir whatever in your England?  But what a people!  But yes, you resemble us, as bottles—­bottles; seulement, you are emptied of your wine.  Ce Monsieur Peterbooroo’!  Il m’agace les nerfs.  It cannot be blood in his veins.  One longs to see him cuffed, to see if he has the English lion in him, one knows not where.  But you are so, you English, when not intoxicated.  And so censorious!  You win your battles, they say, upon beer and cordials:  it is why you never can follow up a success.  Je tiens cela du Marechal Prince B-----.  Let that pass.  One groans at your intolerable tristesse.  La vie en Angleterre est comme un marais.  It is a scandal to human nature.  It blows fogs, foul vapours, joint-stiffnesses, agues, pestilences, over us here,—­yes, here!  That is your best side:  but your worst is too atrocious!  Mon Dieu!  Your men-rascals!  Your women-rascals!’

‘Good soul!’ the princess arrested her, ’I beg that you will not abuse England.’