From the drawing-room, Friedrich Wilhelm leads out the Kaiserinn; the Kaiser, as Head of the world, walks first, though without any lady.

How they drank the healths, gave and received the ewers and towels, is written duly in the old Books, but was as indifferent to Friedrich Wilhelm as it is to us; what their conversation was, let no man presume to ask.

Dullish, we should apprehend,--and perhaps BETTER lost to us?
But where there are tongues, there are topics: the Loom of Time wags always, and with it the tongues of men.

Kaiser and Kaiserinn have both been in Karlsbad lately; Kaiser and Kaiserinn both have sailed to Spain, in old days, and been in sieges and things memorable: Friedrich Wilhelm, solid Squire Western of the North, does not want for topics, and talks as a solid rustic gentleman will.

Native politeness he knows on occasion; to etiquette, so far as concerns his own pretensions, he feels callous altogether,--dimly sensible that the Eighteenth Century is setting in, and that solid musketeers and not goldsticks are now the important thing.