gathering of languages, and honey is hybrid, unless you condemn the bee
to suck at a single flower.'

'Ha! you strain compliments like the poet Fretzel,' the margravine
exclaimed. 'Luckily, they're not, addressed to human creatures. You will
find the villa dull, Herr Harry Richmond. For my part, every place is
dull to me that your father does not enliven. We receive no company in
the prince's absence, so we are utterly cut off from fools; we have
simply none about us.'

'The deprivation is one we are immensely sensible of!' said the princess.

'Laugh on! you will some day be aware of their importance in daily life,
Ottilia.'

The princess answered: 'If I could hate, it would be such persons.' A
sentence that hung in the memory of one knowing himself to be animated by
the wildest genius of folly.

We drove to the statue of Prince Albrecht Wohlgemuth, overlooking leagues
of snow-roofed branches. Again Ottilia reverted to Temple,

'That dear little friend of yours who wandered out with you to seek your
father, and is now a sailor! I cannot forget him. It strikes me as a
beautiful piece of the heroism of boys. You both crossed the sea to
travel over the whole Continent until you should find him, did you not?
What is hard to understand, is your father's not writing to you while he
did us the favour to reside at the palace.'

'Roy is a butterfly,' said the margravine.

'That I cannot think.'

'Roy was busy, he was occupied. I won't have him abused. Besides, one
can't be always caressing and cajoling one's pretty brats.'

'He is an intensely loving father.'

'Very well; establish that, and what does it matter whether he wrote or
not? A good reputation is the best vindication.'

The princess smiled. 'See here, dearest aunty, the two boys passed half
the night here, until my Aennchen's father gave them shelter.'

'Apparently he passes half or all the night in the open air everywhere,'
said the margravine.

I glanced hurriedly over both faces. The margravine was snuffing her
nostrils up contemptuously. The princess had vividly reddened. Her face
was luminous over the nest of white fur folding her neck.

'Yes, I must have the taste for it: for when I was a child,' said I,
plunging at anything to catch a careless topic, 'I was out in my father's
arms through a winter night, and I still look back on it as one of the
most delightful I have ever known. I wish I could describe the effect it
had on me. A track of blo