“Gott sei dank!” he ejaculated. “Now I know it’s not true, but I was always afraid. People always said she was taub-stumm. Now I can tell them what fools they are. I’ve heard Her Royal Highness with my own ears.” He departed joyously to spread the glad tidings.
But many people are hard to convince. One dear old lady in Berlin whom I knew was always making doubtful inquiries of me on this subject, and, like Thomas, refused to believe.
“Ach, yes!” she would say, “of course you dare not tell me the truth. You have to say that she is all right.”
“Of course,” I mocked, “it is essential for a deaf-and-dumb person to have an English teacher, isn’t it—and another one for French? She is deaf-and-dumb in three languages.”
The lady was still doubtful, and I left her deeply pondering.
After three days we left Donau-Eschingen for Strasburg, a very beautiful town, disfigured by a terribly ugly modern palace, which the Emperor calls the “Railway-palace,” as he considers it to be of that hideously harsh, painful form of architecture we have been accustomed to bear with, for purely utilitarian purposes. “They built it before my time,” he hastens to tell every one. “Makes me feel ill every time I see it.”
It was a huge, square gaunt building, surrounded by a palisaded garden, which contained not a solitary spot where any one could be free from the attentions of the crowd.
Whenever the Princess walked in it for a few minutes, or wanted to sit and work under a tree, the whole length of palisade, only a few yards away, became a mass of human bodies: the butcher-boy with his basket, the maidservant on her way to market, the workman with his pipe, rows upon rows of schoolboys and girls with their teachers, clerks and washerwomen, all welded themselves into a solid mass and concentrated their gaze upon one poor unfortunate child. She fled into the house for the time, and then the crowd melted away, only to re-form the moment any one reappeared. The Emperor gave orders that the palisades should be boarded up inside, but of course it was impossible to do it at once, so that all that week of lovely weather the Princess had to stay indoors or content herself with drives round the town, followed by a clattering contingent of schoolboys. The people seemed to be delighted to see the Princess, and were continually waving pocket-handkerchiefs as soon as she appeared. They also greeted the Emperor and Empress with great enthusiasm when they arrived; but whether this was just the German portion of the population, who tried to cover up by their exuberant loyalty any deficiencies on the part of the French, it is hard to say.
The Princess went with her mother to visit the lovely old Cathedral of Strasburg, and saw the wonderful clock and its flapping cock and moving figures, and then drove through the old, picturesque part of the town, among queer old wooden houses with carved beams.
The Empress visited hospitals and orphanages all day, and in the evenings big, tiresome official dinners took place, at which every one looked bored. The Princess was not there, but peeped at them between the big red-velvet curtains which shut off a portion of the dining-hall.