at hardly a palace on the Continent is without the
chamber of this adventurer, who, till he stooped to be like them, was
easily their master. Another democracy had here recorded its invasion in
the American stoves which the custodian pointed out in the corridor
when Mrs. March, with as little delay as possible, had proclaimed their
country. The custodian professed an added respect for them from the
fact, and if he did not feel it, no doubt he merited the drink money
which they lavished on him at parting.

Their driver also was a congenial spirit, and when he let them out of
his carriage at the station, he excused the rainy day to them. He was
a merry fellow beyond the wont of his nation, and he-laughed at the bad
weather, as if it had been a good joke on them.

His gayety, and the red sunset light, which shone on the stems of the
pines on the way back to Berlin, contributed to the content in which
they reviewed their visit to Potsdam. They agreed that the place was
perfectly charming, and that it was incomparably expressive of kingly
will and pride. These had done there on the grand scale what all
the German princes and princelings had tried to do in imitation and
emulation of French splendor. In Potsdam the grandeur, was not a
historical growth as at Versailles, but was the effect of family genius,
in which there was often the curious fascination of insanity.

They felt this strongly again amidst the futile monuments of the
Hohenzollern Museum, in Berlin, where all the portraits, effigies,
personal belongings and memorials of that gifted, eccentric race are
gathered and historically disposed. The princes of the mighty line
who stand out from the rest are Frederick the Great and his infuriate.
father; and in the waxen likeness of the son, a small thin figure,
terribly spry, and a face pitilessly alert, appears something of the
madness which showed in the life of the sire.

They went through many rooms in which the memorials of the kings and
queens, the emperors and empresses were carefully ordered, and felt no
kindness except before the relics relating to the Emperor Frederick
and his mother. In the presence of the greatest of the dynasty they
experienced a kind of terror which March expressed, when they were
safely away, in the confession of his joy that those people were dead.

LXVI.

The rough weather which made Berlin almost uninhabitable to Mrs. March
had such an effect with General Triscoe at Weimar th