s were anything but men and women!

I listened, as though in a long distressing dream, to narratives of how
the Prince de Joinville, so terribly eager to burn our dockyards and
destroy our marine, could be playful as a lamb in his nursery with the
children. How Louis Philippe held the little Count de Paris fast in
his chair till his portrait was taken. (Will he be able to seat him so
securely on the throne of France?) How the Emperor of Austria, with
a simplicity of a great mind and a very large head, always thought he
could sit behind the artist and watch the progress of his own picture!
I listened, I say, till my ears tingled and my head swam, and in that
moment there was not a "bounty man" from Kentucky or Ohio that held
royalty more cheaply than myself. Just at this very nick my servant
came to whisper me, that an agent for Messrs. Lorch, Rath; et Co., the
wine-merchants of Frankfort, had called, by my desire, to take an order
for some hock. Delighted at the interruption, I ordered he should be
admitted, and the next moment a very tall pretentious-looking German,
with a tremendously frogged and Brandenburged coat, and the most
extensive beard and moustaches, entered, and with all the ceremonial of
his native land saluted us both, three times over.

I received him with the most impressive and respectable politeness, and
seemed, at least, only to resume my seat after his expressed permission.
The artist, who understood nothing of German, watched all our
proceedings with a "miniature eye," and at last whispered gently, "Who
is he?"

"Heavens!" said I, in a low tone, "don't you know?--he is the Crown
Prince of Hanover!"

The words were not uttered when my little friend let fall his palette
and sprang off his chair, shocked at the very thought of his being
seated in such presence. The German turned towards him one of those
profoundly austere glances that only a foreign bagman or an American
tragedian can compass, and took no further notice of him.

The interview over, I accompanied him to the antechamber, and then took
my leave, to the horror of Sir C-----, who asked me at least twenty
times, "why I did not go down to the door?"

"Oh, we are old friends," said I; "I knew him at Gottingen a dozen years
ago, and we never stand on any ceremony together." My fiction, miserable
as it was, served me from further anecdotes of royalty, since what
private history of kings could astonish the man on such terms of
familiarity