"Leave it."
"I am under orders to give it to her highness herself."
"Good day, then!" laughed the soldier. "You can not enter the gardens without a permit."
Gretchen remembered. "Will you send some one to his excellency the chancellor and tell him I have come from number forty Krumerweg?"
"Krumerweg? The very name ought to close any gate. But, girl, are you speaking truthfully?"
Gretchen exhibited the note. He scratched his chin, perplexed.
"Run along. If they ask me, I'll say that I didn't see you." The sentry resumed his beat.
Gretchen stepped inside the gates, and the real beauty of the gardens was revealed to her for the first time. Strange flowers she had never seen before, plants with great broad leaves, grass-like carpet, and giant ferns, unlike anything she had plucked in the valleys and the mountains. It was all a fairy-land. There were marble urns with hanging vines, and marble statues. She loitered in this pebbled path and that, forgetful of her errand. Even had her mind been filled with the importance of it, she did not know where to go to find the proper entrance.
A hand grasped her rudely by the arm.
"What are you doing here?" thundered the head gardener. "Be off with you! Don't you know that no one is allowed in here without a permit?"