Much the reverse.  But I had to congratulate myself subsequently on having been moderate in the expression of my wishes; for, as my father explained to me, with sufficient lucidity to enlighten my dulness, the margravine was tempting him grossly.  She saw more than I did of his plans.  She could actually affect to wink at them that she might gain her point, and have her amusement, and live for the hour, treacherously beguiling a hoodwinked pair to suppose her partially blind or wholly complaisant.  My father knew her and fenced her.

‘Had I yielded,’ he said, when my heart was low after the parting, ’I should have shown her my hand.  I do not choose to manage the prince that the margravine may manage me.  I pose my pride—­immolate my son to it, Richie?  I hope not.  No.  At Vienna we shall receive an invitation to Sarkeld for the winter, if we hear nothing of entreaties to turn aside to Ischl at Munich.  She is sure to entreat me to accompany her on her annual visit to her territory of Rippau, which she detests; and, indeed, there is not a vine in the length and breadth of it.  She thought herself broad awake, and I have dosed her with an opiate.’

He squeezed my fingers tenderly.  I was in want both of consolation and very delicate handling when we drove out of the little Wurtemberg town:  I had not taken any farewell from Ottilia.  Baroness Turckems was already exercising her functions of dragon.  With the terrible forbidding word ‘Repose’ she had wafted the princess to her chamber in the evening, and folded her inextricably round and round in the morning.  The margravine huffed, the prince icy, Ottilia invisible, I found myself shooting down from the heights of a dream among shattered fragments of my cloud-palace before I well knew that I had left off treading common earth.  All my selfish nature cried out to accuse Ottilia.  We drove along a dusty country road that lay like a glaring shaft of the desert between vineyards and hills.

‘There,’ said my father, waving his hand where the hills on our left fell to a distance and threw up a lofty head and neck cut with one white line, ’your Hohenzollerns shot up there.  Their castle looks like a tight military stock.  Upon my word, their native mountain has the air of a drum major.  Mr. Peterborough, have you a mind to climb it?  We are at your disposal.’

‘Thank you, thank you, sir,’ said the Rev. Ambrose, gazing enthusiastically, but daunted by the heat:  ‘if it is your wish?’

’We have none that is not yours, Mr. Peterborough.  You love ruins, and we are adrift just now.  I presume we can drive to the foot of the ascent.  I should wish my son perhaps to see the source of great houses.’

Here it was that my arm was touched by old Schwartz.  He saluted stiffly, and leaning from the saddle on the trot of his horse at an even pace with our postillion, stretched out a bouquet of roses.  I seized it palpitating, smelt the roses, and wondered.  May a man write of his foolishness?—­tears rushed to my eyes.  Schwartz was far behind us when my father caught sight of the magical flowers.