I thought it was pretty manifest that the elderly lady was embarrassed at finding herself in such a conspicuous place arrayed in such cheap apparel; I began to feel sorry for her and troubled about her.  She tried to seem very busy with her prayer-book and her responses, and unconscious that she was out of place, but I said to myself, “She is not succeeding—­there is a distressed tremulousness in her voice which betrays increasing embarrassment.”  Presently the Savior’s name was mentioned, and in her flurry she lost her head completely, and rose and courtesied, instead of making a slight nod as everybody else did.  The sympathetic blood surged to my temples and I turned and gave those fine birds what I intended to be a beseeching look, but my feelings got the better of me and changed it into a look which said, “If any of you pets of fortune laugh at this poor soul, you will deserve to be flayed for it.”  Things went from bad to worse, and I shortly found myself mentally taking the unfriended lady under my protection.  My mind was wholly upon her.  I forgot all about the sermon.  Her embarrassment took stronger and stronger hold upon her; she got to snapping the lid of her smelling-bottle—­it made a loud, sharp sound, but in her trouble she snapped and snapped away, unconscious of what she was doing.  The last extremity was reached when the collection-plate began its rounds; the moderate people threw in pennies, the nobles and the rich contributed silver, but she laid a twenty-mark gold piece upon the book-rest before her with a sounding slap!  I said to myself, “She has parted with all her little hoard to buy the consideration of these unpitying people—­it is a sorrowful spectacle.”  I did not venture to look around this time; but as the service closed, I said to myself, “Let them laugh, it is their opportunity; but at the door of this church they shall see her step into our fine carriage with us, and our gaudy coachman shall drive her home.”

Then she rose—­and all the congregation stood while she walked down the aisle.  She was the Empress of Germany!

No—­she had not been so much embarrassed as I had supposed.  My imagination had got started on the wrong scent, and that is always hopeless; one is sure, then, to go straight on misinterpreting everything, clear through to the end.  The young lady with her imperial Majesty was a maid of honor—­and I had been taking her for one of her boarders, all the time.

This is the only time I have ever had an Empress under my personal protection; and considering my inexperience, I wonder I got through with it so well.  I should have been a little embarrassed myself if I had known earlier what sort of a contract I had on my hands.

We found that the Empress had been in Baden-Baden several days.  It is said that she never attends any but the English form of church service.

I lay abed and read and rested from my journey’s fatigues the remainder of that Sunday, but I sent my agent to represent me at the afternoon service, for I never allow anything to interfere with my habit of attending church twice every Sunday.