"What biddable little things we were!" she went on, while March was
struggling to keep Kenby in the background of his consciousness. "The
rococo must have always had a sneaking charm for us, when we were pinning
our faith to pointed arches; and yet I suppose we were perfectly sincere.
Oh, look at that divinely ridiculous Madonna!" They were now making their
way out of the crooked footway behind their hotel toward the street
leading to the cathedral, and she pointed to the Blessed Virgin over the
door of some religious house, her drapery billowing about her feet; her
body twisting to show the sculptor's mastery of anatomy, and the halo
held on her tossing head with the help of stout gilt rays. In fact, the
Virgin's whole figure was gilded, and so was that of the child in her
arms. "Isn't she delightful?"

"I see what you mean," said March, with a dubious glance at the statue,
"but I'm not sure, now, that I wouldn't like something quieter in my
Madonnas."

The thoroughfare which they emerged upon, with the cathedral ending the
prospective, was full of the holiday so near at hand. The narrow
sidewalks were thronged with people, both soldiers and civilians, and up
the middle of the street detachments of military came and went, halting
the little horse-cars and the huge beer-wagons which otherwise seemed to
have the sole right to the streets of Wurzburg; they came jingling or
thundering out of the aide streets and hurled themselves round the
corners reckless of the passers, who escaped alive by flattening
themselves like posters against the house walls. There were peasants, men
and women, in the costume which the unbroken course of their country life
had kept as quaint as it was a hundred years before; there were citizens
in the misfits of the latest German fashions; there were soldiers of all