Fräulein Aennchen received this letter at a time when she was playing a game at "Catch-me-if-you-can" with her royal bridegroom elect, King Daucus Carota the First, in the meadow at the back of the garden, and immensely enjoying it when, as was often the case, she suddenly ducked down in full career, and the little king would go shooting right away over her head. Instead of reading the letter immediately (which she had always done before), she put it in her pocket unopened, and we shall presently see that it came too late.
Herr Dapsul could not make out at all how Fräulein Aennchen had changed her mind so suddenly, and grown quite fond of Herr Porphyrio von Ockerodastes, whom she had so cordially detested before. He consulted the stars on the subject, but as they gave him no satisfactory information, he was obliged to come to the conclusion that human hearts are more mysterious and inscrutable than all the secrets of the universe, and not to be thrown light upon by any constellation. He could not think that what had produced love for the little creature in Anna's heart was merely the highness of his nature; and personal beauty he had none. If (as the reader knows) the canon of beauty, as laid down by Herr Dapsul, is very unlike the ideas which young ladies form upon that subject, he did, after all, possess sufficient knowledge of the world to know that, although the said young women hold that good sense, wit, cleverness and pleasant manners are very agreeable fellow-lodgers in a comfortable house, still, a man who can't call himself the possessor of a properly-made, fashionable coat--were he a Shakespeare, a Goethe, a Tieck, or a Jean Paul Richter--would run a decided risk of being beaten out of the field by any sufficiently well put-together lieutenant of hussars in uniform, if he took it in his head to pay his addresses to one of them. Now in Fräulein Aennchen's case it was a different matter altogether. It was neither good looks nor cleverness that were in question; but it is not exactly every day that a poor country lady becomes a queen all in a moment, and accordingly it was not very likely that Herr Dapsul should hit upon the cause which had been operating, particularly as the very stars had left him in the lurch.
As may be supposed, those three, Herr Porphyrio, Herr Dapsul and Fräulein Aennchen, were one heart and one soul. This went so far that Herr Dapsul left his tower oftener than he had ever been known to do before, to chat with his much-prized son-in-law on all sorts of agreeable subjects; and not only this, but he now regularly took his breakfast in the house. About this hour, too, Herr Porphyrio was wont to come forth from his silken palace, and eat a good share of Fräulein Aennchen's bread and butter.
"Ah, ah!" she would often whisper softly in his ear, "if papa only knew that you are a real king, dearest Cordovanspitz!"
"Be still, oh heart! Melt not away in rapture," Daucus Carota the First would say. "Near, near is the joyful day!"
It chanced that the schoolmaster had sent Fräulein Aennchen a present of some of the finest radishes from his garden. She was particularly pleased at this, as Herr Dapsul was very fond of radishes, and she could not get anything from the vegetable garden because it was covered by the silk marquee. Besides this, it now occurred to her for the first time that, among all the roots and vegetables she had seen in the palace, radishes were conspicuous by their absence.
So she speedily cleaned them and served them up for her father's breakfast. He had ruthlessly shorn several of them of their leafy crowns, dipped them in salt, and eaten them with much relish, when Cordovanspitz came in.
"Oh, my Ockerodastes," Herr Dapsul called to him, "are you fond of radishes?"
There was still a particularly fine and beautiful radish on the dish. But the moment Cordovanspitz saw it his eves gleamed with fury, and he cried in a resonant voice--
"What, unworthy duke, do you dare to appear in my presence again, and to force your way, with the coolest of audacity, into a house which is under my protection? Have I not pronounced sentence of perpetual banishment upon you as a pretender to the imperial throne? Away, treasonous vassal; begone from my sight for ever!"