We marched past the tower, all of us, I am sure, with splendid feelings.
A stone's throw beyond it was the lofty tent; over it drooped a flag, and
flags were on poles round a wide ring of rope guarded by foresters and
gendarmes, mounted and afoot. The band, dressed in green, with black
plumes to their hats, played in the middle of the ring. Outside were
carriages, and ladies and gentlemen on horseback, full of animation;
rustics, foresters, town and village people, men, women, and children,
pressed against the ropes. It was a day of rays of sunshine, now from
off one edge, now from another of large slow clouds, so that at times we
and the tower were in a blaze; next the lake-palace was illuminated, or
the long grey lake and the woods of pine and of bare brown twigs making
bays in it.

Several hands beckoned on our coming in sight of the carriages. 'There
he is, then!' I thought; and it was like swallowing my heart in one solid
lump. Mademoiselle had free space to trot ahead of us. We saw a tall-
sitting lady, attired in sables, raise a finger to her, and nip her chin.
Away the little lady flew to a second carriage, and on again, as one may
when alive with an inquiry. I observed to Temple, 'I wonder whether she
says in her German, "It is my question"; do you remember?' There was no
weight whatever in what I said or thought.

She rode back, exclaiming, 'Nowhere. He is nowhere, and nobody knows.
He will arrive. But he is not yet. Now,' she bent coaxingly down to me,
'can you not a few words of German? Only a smallest sum! It is the
Markgrafin, my good aunt, would speak wid you, and she can no English-
only she is eager to behold you, and come! You will know, for my sake,
some scrap of German--ja? You will--nicht wahr? Or French? Make your
glom-pudding of it, will you?'