er, who was coming to Nuremberg for the military manoeuvres then
at hand. But if they had been in the unmolested discomfort of their
unlivable magnificence, their splendor was such as might well reconcile
the witness to the superior comfort of a private station in our snugger
day. The Marches came out owning that the youth which might once have
found the romantic glories of the place enough was gone from them. But
so much of it was left to her that she wished to make him stop and look
at the flirtation which had blossomed out between that pretty young girl
and the Russian, whom they had scarcely missed from their party in the
Burg. He had apparently never parted from the girl, and now as they
sat together on the threshold of the gloomy tower, he most have been
teaching her more Slavic words, for they were both laughing as if they
understood each other perfectly.

In his security from having the affair in any wise on his hands, March
would have willingly lingered, to see how her education got on; but it
began to rain, The rain did not disturb the lovers, but it obliged the
elderly spectators to take refuge in their carriage; and they drove
off to find the famous Little Goose Man. This is what every one does at
Nuremberg; it would be difficult to say why. When they found the Little
Goose Man, he was only a mediaeval fancy in bronze, who stood on his
pedestal in the market-place and contributed from the bill of the goose
under his arm a small stream to the rainfall drenching the wet wares of
the wet market-women round the fountain, and soaking their cauliflowers
and lettuce, their grapes and pears, their carrots and turnips, to the
watery flavor of all fruits and vegetables in Germany.

The air was very raw and chill; but after supper the clouds cleared
away, and a pleasant evening tempted the travellers out. The portier
dissembled any slight which their eagerness for the only amusement he
could think of inspired, and directed them to a popular theatre which
was giving a summer season at low prices to the lower classes, and which
they surprised, after some search, trying to hide itself in a sort of
back square. They got the best places at a price which ought to have
been mortifyingly cheap, and found themselves, with a thousand other
harmless bourgeois folk, in a sort of spacious, agreeable barn, of a
decoration by no means ugly, and of a certain artless comfort. Each seat
fronted a shelf at the back of the seat before it,