igh-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 spinet
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."

"Oh!" said August, humbly, not even sure that he understood
entirely yet. He looked at Hirschvogel: surely it had a royal
soul within it: would it not wake up and speak? Oh dear! how he
longed to hear the voice of his fire-king! And he began to forget
that he stood by a lady who sat upon a pedestal of gold-and-white
china, with the year 1746 cut on it, and the Meissen mark.

"What will you be when you are a man?" said the little lady,
sharply, for her black eyes were quick though her red lips were
smiling. "Will you work for the _Koenigliche Porcellan-Manufactur_,
like my great dead Kandler?"

"I have never thought," said August, stammering; "at least--that
is--I do wish--I do hope to be a painter, as was