the wall and laughed; a Dresden mirror was tripping about, crowned with flowers, and a Japanese bonze was riding along on a griffin; a slim Venetian rapier had come to blows with a stout Ferrara sabre, all about a little pale-faced chit of a damsel in white Nymphenburg china; and a portly Franconian pitcher in gres gris was calling aloud, “Oh, these Italians! always at feud!” But nobody listened to him at all.  A great number of little Dresden cups and saucers were all skipping and waltzing; the teapots, with their broad round faces, were spinning their own lids like teetotums; the high-backed gilded chairs were having a game of cards together; and a little Saxe poodle, with a blue ribbon at its throat, was running from one to another, whilst a yellow cat of Cornelis Lachtleven’s rode about on a Delft horse in blue pottery of 1489.  Meanwhile the brilliant light shed on the scene came from three silver candelabra, though they had no candles set up in them; and, what is the greatest miracle of all, August looked on at these mad freaks and felt no sensation of wonder!  He only, as he heard the violin and the spinnet playing, felt an irresistible desire to dance too.  No doubt his face said what he wished; for a lovely little lady, all in pink and gold and white, with powdered hair, and high-heeled shoes, and all made of the very finest and fairest Meissen china, tripped up to him, and smiled, and gave him her hand, and led him out to a minuet.  And he danced it perfectly—­poor little August in his thick, clumsy shoes, and his thick, clumsy sheepskin jacket, and his rough homespun linen, and his broad Tyrolean hat!  He must have danced it perfectly, this dance of kings and queens in days when crowns were duly honored, for the lovely lady always smiled benignly and never scolded him at all, and danced so divinely herself to the stately measures the spinnet was playing that August could not take his eyes off her till, their minuet ended, she sat down on her own white-and-gold bracket.

“I am the Princess of Saxe-Royale,” she said to him, with a benignant smile; “and you have got through that minuet very fairly.”

Then he ventured to say to her:—­

“Madame my princess, could you tell me kindly why some of the figures and furniture dance and speak, and some lie up in a corner like lumber?  It does make me curious.  Is it rude to ask?”

For it greatly puzzled him why, when some of the bric-a-brac was all full of life and motion, some was quite still and had not a single thrill in it.

“My dear child,” said the powdered lady, “is it possible that you do not know the reason?  Why, those silent, dull things are imitation!”

This she said with so much decision that she evidently considered it a condensed but complete answer.

“Imitation?” repeated August, timidly, not understanding.

“Of course!  Lies, falsehoods, fabrications!” said the princess in pink shoes, very vivaciously.  “They only pretend to be what we are!  They never wake up:  how can they?  No imitation ever had any soul in it yet.”