Then, before the talk could begin again, out came an officer, and the soldiers at his command mounted their horses. While the talk had gone on, the smith had mended the wheel and now stood in his leather apron as if waiting for something to happen.
The Herr Ober-Forester stepped to one side and, with a wave of his important hand, motioned the wood gatherers to move farther from the carriage.
The door of the inn was then thrown open by the Herr Landlord, bowing almost to the ground as he did it. Four grand ladies and a gentleman then approached the carriage. Nobody troubled much to look at two of the ladies, though they were young and very noble in appearance.
The third was so dignified that everybody stood up a little straighter. Yet her face was as kind-looking as it was handsome. She was not young. Years had turned her hair quite snow-white, and yet her eyes were as bright and sparkling as a girl's, and she greeted them pleasantly.
But it was at the fourth lady everyone gazed and gazed almost as if enchanted. Never in all her life was little Bettina to see anyone half so lovely. She was exactly like the Princesses in the Fairy Tales, tall and slender, and the most graceful person in the whole world. Her hair was quite golden and waved in the loveliest way from a parting in the middle. Her complexion was pink and white and made you think of snowdrops. Her features were quite perfect and her smile altogether enchanting.
And her eyes!
"Never," the people of Berlin had said years before, "never have we seen such eyes, never."
They were blue, and deep in colour, and they seemed to speak right to the heart and say things no one can write of. They were wonderful eyes, the most wonderful then in Europe, and that is all there is about it.
Though she looked worried and anxious, the moment she saw other faces than those of the soldiers, she smiled first at one, then at the other.
About her lovely throat was a light tissue scarf, and a breeze, seizing it, blew its end sharply into the very face of the dignified, bright-eyed old lady.