to amuse us. Temple and I cantered over the great Belgian battlefield,
talking of Bella Vista tower, the statue, the margravine, our sour milk
and black-bread breakfast, the little Princess Ottilia, with her 'It is
my question,' and 'You were kind to my lambs, sir,' thoughtless of glory
and dead bones. My father was very differently impressed. He was in an
exultant glow, far outmatching the bloom on our faces when we rejoined
him. I cried,

'Papa, if the prince won't pay for a real statue, I will, and I'll
present it in your name!'

'To the nation?' cried he, staring, and arresting his arm in what seemed
an orchestral movement.

'To the margravine !'

He heard, but had to gather his memory. He had been fighting the battle,
and made light of Bella Vista. I found that incidents over which a day
or two had rolled lost their features to him. He never smiled at
recollections. If they were forced on him noisily by persons he liked,
perhaps his face was gay, but only for a moment. The gaiety of his
nature drew itself from hot-springs of hopefulness: our arrival in
England, our interviews there, my majority Burgundy, my revisitation of
Germany--these events to come gave him the aspect children wear out a-
Maying or in an orchard. He discussed the circumstances connected with
the statue as dry matter-of-fact, and unless it was his duty to be
hilarious at the dinner-table, he was hardly able to respond to a call on
his past life and mine. His future, too, was present tense: 'We do
this,' not 'we will do this'; so that, generally, no sooner did we speak
of an anticipated scene than he was acting in it. I studied him eagerly,