"What a pity! Was their captain anything like Charles de Moor?"
"Just such a man."
"Baron," observed Myrtilla, a little mischievously, "the situation of your castle must be unique; in the midst of the Hartz mountains, at the falls of the Rhine, with the Brocken in front, and the Black Forest behind."
"You doat on the place, don't you?" asked Miss Turretville. "Do you live there always?"
"No; only in the hunting season. I am equally at home in all the capitals of the continent. I might, perhaps, be chiefly at my native place, Vienna, only my friend, the emperor, is never happy but when I am with him; and his devotion to me is rather overwhelming. The truth is, one gets surfeited with courts, and kings, and princes; so I thought it would be quite refreshing to take a trip to America, having great curiosity to see what sort of a place it is. I recollect, at the last court ball, the emperor was teazing me to waltz with his cousin, the Archduchess of Hesse Hoblingen, who, he feared, would be offended if I neglected her. But her serene highness dances as if she had a cannon-ball chained to each foot, and so I got off by flatly telling my friend the emperor that if women chose to go to balls in velvet and ermine, and with coronets on their heads, they might get princes or some such people to dance with them; as for my part, it was rather excruciating to whirl about with persons in heavy royal robes!"
"Is it possible!" exclaimed Miss Turretville, "did you venture to talk so to an emperor? Of course before next day you were loaded with chains and immured in a dungeon; from which I suppose you escaped by a subterranean passage."
"Not at all; my old crony the emperor knows his man; so he only laughed and slapped me on the shoulder, and I took his arm, and we sauntered off together to the other end of the grand saloon. I think I was in my hussar uniform; I recollect that evening I broke my quizzing glass, and had to borrow the Princess of Saxe Blinkenberg's."
"Was it very elegant—set round with diamonds?" asked Miss Matilda Bentley, putting up to her face a hand on which glittered a valuable brilliant.
"Quite likely it was, but I never look at diamonds; one gets so tired of them. I have not worn any of mine these seven years; I often joke with my friend Prince Esterhazy about his diamond coat, that he will persist in wearing on great occasions. Its glitter really incommodes my eyes when he happens to be near me, as he generally is. Whenever he moves you may track him by the gems that drop from it, and you may hear him far off by their continual tinkling as they fall."
"Only listen to that, Mr. Smith," said Aunt Quimby aside to her protegée, "I do not believe there is such a man in the world as that Hester Hazy with his diamond coat, that he's telling all this rigmarole about. It sounds like one of Mother Bunch's tales."