ill so very weak. My dear
Sibley has left me to be married. She marries a Hanoverian officer. We
change countries--I mean,' the princess caught back her tongue, 'she
will become German, not compatriot of your ships of war. My English
rebukes me. I cease to express... It is like my walking, done half for
pride, I think. Baroness, lower me, and let me rest.'

The baroness laid her gently on the dry brown pine-sheddings, and blew
a whistle that hung at her girdle, by which old Schwartzy kept out of
sight to encourage the princess's delusion of pride in her walking, was
summoned. Ottilia had fainted. The baroness shot a suspicious glance at
me. 'It comes of this everlasting English talk,' I heard her mutter.
She was quick to interpose between me and the form I had once raised and
borne undisputedly.

'Schwartz is the princess's attendant, sir,' she said. 'In future, may I
request you to talk German?'

The Prince of Eppenwelzen and Prince Otto were shooting in the
mountains. The margravine, after conversing with the baroness, received
me stiffly. She seemed eager to be rid of us; was barely hospitable. My
mind was too confused to take much note of words and signs. I made an
appointment to meet my father the day following, and walked away and
returned at night, encountered Schwartz and fed on the crumbs of tidings
I got from him, a good, rough old faithful fellow, far past the age for
sympathy, but he had carried Ottilia when she was an infant, and meant
to die in her service. I thought him enviable above most creatures.

His principal anxiety was about my finding sleeping quarters. When he
had delivered himself three times over of all that I could lead him to
say, I left him still puffing at his pipe. He continued on guard to be
in readiness to run for a doctor, should one be wanted. Twice in the
night I came across his path. The night was quiet, dark blue, and
starry; the morning soft and fragrant. The burden of the night was
bearable, but that of daylight I fled from, and all day I was like one
expecting a crisis. Laughter, with so much to arouse it, hardly had any
foothold within me to stir my wits. For if I said 'Folly!' I did not
feel it, and what I felt I did not understand. My heart and head were
positively divided. Days and weeks were spent in reconciling them a
little; days passed with a pencil and scribbled slips of paper--the
lines written with regular commencements and irregular terminations; you
know them. W