the needles, and the bread-and-butter is to her a sandwich with love
inside it. If you say to your grandmother, "Ma'am, it's a fine day,"
or what not, she would find in the words no other meaning than their
outward and visible one; but say so to the girl you love, and she
understands a thousand mystic meanings in them. Thus, in a word, though
Dorothea and I did not, probably, on the first night of our meeting,
talk of anything more than the weather, or trumps, or some subjects
which to such listeners as Schnabel and Klingenspohr and others might
appear quite ordinary, yet to US they had a different signification, of
which Love alone held the key.

Without further ado then, after the occurrences of that evening, I
determined on staying at Kalbsbraten, and presenting my card the next
day to the Hof-Marshal, requesting to have the honor of being presented
to his Highness the Prince, at one of whose court-balls my Dorothea
appeared as I have described her.

It was summer when I first arrived at Kalbsbraten. The little court was
removed to Siegmundslust, his Highness's country-seat: no balls were
taking place, and, in consequence, I held my own with Dorothea pretty
well. I treated her admirer, Lieutenant Klingenspohr, with perfect
scorn, had a manifest advantage over Major Schnabel, and used somehow
to meet the fair one every day, walking in company with her mamma in
the palace garden, or sitting under the acacias, with Belotte in her
mother's lap, and the favorite romance beside her. Dear, dear Dorothea!
what a number of novels she must have read in her time! She confesses to
me that she had been in love with Uncas, with Saint Preux, with Ivanhoe,
and with hosts of German heroes of romance; and when I asked her if
she, whose heart was so tender towards imaginary youths, had never had
a preference for any one of her living adorers, she only looked, and