There were five children at the Schloss, two girls and three boys, and the Princess was delighted to have so many children to talk and play with. She was always interested in new people, and never shy. She took all her meals with them and their governess and tutor, and played furious games of hide-and-seek all over the garden. Nor did she neglect to visit the stables, and tried to ride a donkey bare-backed without a bridle—a very difficult feat, as she found to her cost, for being uplifted with pride at being able to stick on for a few minutes, she rode into the front of the Schloss, where the donkey tipped her ignominiously on to the gravel before the assembled ladies and gentlemen and then raced back to the stables. Beyond a few scratches she was not much hurt.
In the district of Baden, where Donau-Eschingen is situated, and in the various valleys of the Black Forest, the peasant costumes are extremely quaint and varied, each valley being distinguished by its own particular Tracht. At the invitation of the Prince of Fürstenburg all the inhabitants of the surrounding district came to greet the Emperor and Empress. It was a most beautiful and picturesque sight, these masses of people in their many-coloured head-dresses and wonderfully embroidered bodices. Some of them had huge erections made of brilliantly coloured beads on their heads, in shape like a wedding cake, and often weighing close on twenty pounds; others wore straw hats covered with bright red or black silk pompons; while another characteristic head-dress was a sort of pointed, stiff black silk cap, from which hung long streamers of black ribbon. They had wonderfully embroidered bodices worked in silver lace, and short pleated skirts of a portentous width all round.
The Emperor and Empress and all the guests stood on the balcony after they returned from church—it was of course Sunday when the fête took place—and watched the procession go by. The inhabitants of each valley walked together and carried a flag bearing the name of their particular district. The cheerful, sunburnt peasants moved slowly through the beautiful gardens, men and women, marching past in their quaint picturesque dress, which, though so crude in colour, yet blended together in a riot of delightful beauty, threading in and out in a long-drawn-out line of marvellous effect. The sun glinted from the masses of opalescent beads carried on the heads of three or four hundred sturdy maidens, or lit up the wide stretch of red pompons which cut across the procession like a field of poppies, then wandered to the bright red waistcoats worn by the men, shone on the green silk aprons or the broad cerise ribbons and the wonderfully starched and plaited white cambric sleeves.
Three of the women, each wearing a different costume, came up to the balcony and presented an address to the Empress, who talked with them in her usual kindly manner. The peasants were three women of great dignity and a certain nobility of manner, self-possessed and apparently not in the least intimidated. Probably in ordinary costume they might have created a different impression, and would have appeared commonplace and ordinary in type and feature; but the marvel of these peasant dresses is that the plain woman looks in them almost as well as the handsomest; they bestow a piquancy, an alluring attractiveness on the least prepossessing of womankind. In detail they exploit the bizarre, the unexpected, often the ludicrous, yet subtly blend into a complete and satisfactory whole, as incomprehensible as it is fascinating.
For the rest of the day the Schloss garden was crowded with groups of peasants, some of them tiny boys and girls, all anxious to see the Kaiserin, and above all “die kleine Prinzessin,” who has always kept a very special place in the hearts of the German people.
A curious rumour, one of those inexplicable tales which, though totally devoid of foundation, are yet firmly accepted and become one more of those popular errors so tenaciously held, a whispered story with regard to the Princess, with which she herself is much amused, has always been current in Germany—even in the remotest corners of the Empire—to the effect that she is deaf and dumb. How this extraordinary idea arose can never be known, for at every stage of her existence the Princess has lagged noways behind other children in volubility of expression and quickness of hearing.
Once at the seaside a faithful forester, a true and loyal German subject, approached the Court physician, who was in attendance on the royal children, paddling in the “briny” a short distance away, and expressed his unmitigated sorrow at the misfortune suffered by the Imperial Family, in that their only daughter should be so deeply afflicted.
At the moment one of those healthy spells of zanking happened to take place between the Princess and her brother.
“Do you hear that?” said the genial doctor. “Can you hear your deaf-and-dumb Princess talking?” She was indeed talking in tones that carried to quite a distance. “Go a little nearer and listen.”
The man stopped a short distance away, and drank in the sounds as though they were heavenly music. The poor afflicted child of his imagination fled for ever. He turned with his face radiating joy.