sion
to find in the mountains an honest, comely peasant woman, and married
she must be, to act as wet-nurse for the expected crown prince or
princess.

Then Hansei came home with the merry party--there was much storming and
angry refusal; but finally the practical sense of the peasant folk
prevailed. It was, after all, only for a year, and it would mean comfort
and wealth, instead of hunger and grinding poverty. And scarcely had
their consent been wrung from them, when shouting and cheering announced
the great event of the crown prince's birth. Then came that strange,
long drive over hill and dale, through the dark night; and now, in the
Royal Palace, she tried to collect herself, to grasp the meaning of all
that splendour, the unintelligible ceremonious talk and bearing of those
about her. She was to be taken at once to see the queen and her precious
charge.

Walpurga was full of happiness when she left the queen's bedroom.
Touched by the comely young peasant-woman's naive and familiar
kindliness, the queen, who seemed to her beautiful as an angel, had
kissed her, and, on noticing a tear, had said: "Don't cry, Walpuga! You
are a mother, too, like myself!" The little prince took to his nurse
without much trouble, and she soon became accustomed to her new life,
although her thoughts often dwelt longingly on her native mountains, her
own child and mother and husband. How they would miss her! She knew her
Hansei was a good man at heart, but not particularly shrewd, and easily
gulled or led astray.

Meanwhile, her high spirits, her artless bluntness, the quaint
superstitions of the mountain child, gained her the goodwill and
approval of the king and queen, of Dr. Gunther, the court physician, of
the whole royal household, and, above all, of the lady-in-waiting,
Countess Irma Wildenort.

_II.--The Love Affairs of a King_

Countess Irma's letters to Emmy, her only convent friend, contained
little of idle gossip and of things that had happened. They had no
continuity. They were introspective, and took the form of a diary taken
up at odd moments and left again to be continued, sometimes the
following day, sometimes after a week. They revealed intellectual
development far in advance of her years, and clear perception of
character.

"The queen lives in an exclusive world of sentiment and would like to
raise everybody to her exalted mood--liana-like, in the morning-glow and
evening-glow of sentiment, never in white da