before him, when the fat hand of the Baron Von Dummkopf was placed on his arm-with a profound apology for the liberty-and he was again compelled to stand still while the grand chamberlain, the grand cup-bearer, the grand lords of the bed-chamber, and all the other grand people who had attended him from the gate, preceded him into the hall, and arranged themselves in two lines from the foot to the top of the staircase. Then the Baron made him a low bow, and the Prince, taking this as a hint that it was time for him to be moving, began to ascend the steps very slowly, and almost frightened out of his wits at what he saw, and still more at what he expected to see in the great, powerful, and paternal Grand Duke of Pfaffenheimer. At the top of the staircase was a long gallery, with a number of doors on each side; one of these doors was open, and, standing be. fore it, was a tall, handsome, grave-looking gentleman, ten times more richly dressed than the Baron, who advanced with a majestic step; and Max, starting forward, was about to throw himself into his arms, when the majestic personage, to his utter astonishment, dropped on his knees, and seizing the hand of the youth, kissed it with every token of reverence; and the Baron Von Dummkopf exclaimed, “the grand valet of his serene highness the Grand Duke, will conduct your illustrious highness." The grand valet rose from his knees, and bowing three times to the ground, marched backward before the Prince to the door from which he had come. Max followed, trembling with fearful antici pations, and in a few moments found himself in an ante-chamber, between two rows of elderly and most respectable-looking gentle. men, whom he afterward found to be pages. They formed a lane to another door at the farther end of the long room, and this being opened by the grand valet, Max was ushered into the presence of a little old man, about five feet four inches high, with a brown wig, and otherwise habited in the full uniform of a cavalry general; that is to say, a tight coat covered with lace and embroidery, yellow leather breeches, and a broadsword as long as the wearer; and he was plunged to the waistband in a pair of enormous jack-boots, with spurs half a yard long. This military equipment was oddly in con. trast with the shrivelled figure, and dull, unmeaning, innocent face of the wearer; but he was the Grand Duke of Pfaffenheimer, and Max was relieved at once from his apprehensions. The old gentleman received him very kindly; told him he was a fine lad—asked him if he was not hungry-offered him a pinch of snuff--and then seizing him by the arm, led him away to another room, which he called his museum, to examine what he called his inimitable collection. The Grand Duke of Pfaffenheimer was a virtuoso, and his hobby ran riot upon butterflies; he had a particu lar room, the walls of which were covered with white paper stuck full of black-headed pins, in parallel lines; and the delight of this powerful German prince was to provide each of these pins with a specimen--whether of his own catching or that of another was to him matter of perfect indifference. Two sides of the room were already covered with all manner of moths and butterflies, from the tiniest white miller that flutters around the candle on summer nights, up to the finest of the European tribes, the superb Emperor of Mo. rocco; and he existed in hope of completing the other two sides, before he should be called to surrender his power and rank to a suc cessor. It was a great thing for the old man to get hold of an auditor so perfectly fresh as the Crown Prince, who had chased butterflies hundreds of times, but never with any such purpose as that of running them through with a pin, and sticking them up on a wall. He prosed away with exceeding delight to the young man, about colors and forms, and wings and antennæ-made him remark the almost imperceptible shades of difference that gave to one specimen a value equal to that of the richest jewels, and recounted all the particulars of each chase or purchase by which he had come into possession of these several treasures. Max was exceedingly entertained for an hour or two, but at last he grew tired, and wished all the butterflies in the Red Sea; and thus, for the first time in his life, did he obtain experimental knowledge of that worst of petty afflictions, the influence of a confirmed and relentless bore. It may be supposed how delighted he was when the first bell rang, and the grand valet appeared, with half a score of attendant ministers, to show him the way to his own suite of apartments. At dinner Prince Maximilian Frederick was duly presented to, or rather received the presentations of, his nineteen first and twentyeight second cousins, of both sexes-all very illustrious marshals, generals, counts, barons, baronesses and countesses, with Vons to their names; but he thought them excessively formal and tedious, and long before dinner was over, wished himself quietly eating a stewed hare, or a venison steak from a buck of his own shooting, with honest old Peter Reinwald praising his skill at one side of the table, and the bright eyes of his cousin Margaret sparkling like gems on the other. The viands were rich, and the wines costly and delicate; but they afforded no compensation for the annoyance of wasting three hours at table, having long speeches made at him by every one of the company, and sitting up to be stared at. At last the dinner was over, and Max, finding himself growing as stupid and dull as the rest, proposed to slip out for a ramble about the town on a voyage of discovery; that is, to find out whatever it might contain curious and worth looking at. His father had fallen asleep in his great chair at the head of the table-the marshals and barons were busy boring each other with long stories over their wine, and getting excessively fuddled-and the baronesses and countesses had withdrawn to another apartment, amusing them. selves, as they best might, until evening should come and bring with it the comforts of tea and cards. He would have been willing enough to join them if they had been young and pretty, but they were all elderly, fat, and formal; and there was not a pair of eyes in the whole company a hundredth part as well worth looking into for a kind glance as those of his cousin Margaret; besides, he was horridly tired of sitting still, and, watching his opportunity when every body seemed to have forgotten his presence—which they did, at last, to his great comfort-he slipped away from the table, and hurried up to his own room in search of his hat, rejecting the prof. fered service of five of the elderly pages and his own grand valet, who with an obedient start had prepared to attend him thither, or get whatever he wanted. Having been only one day a prince, he had not yet learned the importance of never doing the least thing for himself. Max had been so long under process of boring, that the idea of taking a long walk by himself-of being alone, and doing just what he pleased for an hour or two-was absolutely delightful; and he scampered down the great staircase, four steps at a time, with the rejoicing eagerness of a school-boy just let loose after a hard, tire. some morning. But he reckoned without his host-or rather with. out his illustrious dignity; for in the court, just outside of the great door, he found no less than six grave gentlemen of the household and the Baron Von Dummkopf, all ready to follow his heels wher ever he went. He wished them all in the Black Forest; but, master. ing his vexation as well as he could, made a short polite speech, in which he gave them to understand that he could dispense with their services; but this would have been a solecism unheard of in the annals of Pfaffenheimer. The six elderly pages were dumb with amazement, and the Baron actually grew pale at the thought of the Crown Prince going about the town unadorned with a tail, like a person of no manner of consequence. He began to utter a long and very impressive speech about dignity and decorum, and all that; and the end of it was, that poor Max was fain to cut short the discourse by an apology for his mistake-at which the Baron was quite as much horrified as before-and consenting to make his stroll in grand state, with the Baron at his left hand and the six pages following two by two in solemn procession. He thought he might just as well have staid in the palace, and already began to suspect that the life of a Crown Prince must be one of the dullest of all human inventions. After a slow and solemn parade through two or three of the principal streets-in which Max saw nothing remarkable, and was considerably annoyed by the way in which all the men pulled off their hats, and all the women stared at him, and by the necessity of bowing right and left at every step till his neck ached-he was glad to get back, and still more glad to be left alone for a little while in his own drawing-room; having succeeded, after great difficulty, in persuading his own valet, pages, and chamberlain, that he had no possible occasion for their attendance. He was tired, and sleepy, and stupid, and very much discontented; for he looked forward with dread and abhorrence to the presumption that every succeeding day was to be quite as formal and tiresome as the one through which he had just passed, and his fears told him that the presumption was exceedingly well-grounded. He was beginning to hate the Baron, who, he suspected, was specially charged with the surveillance of his manners and morals; his father he could not compare with the kind, sensible Peter Reinwald; and when his thoughts wandered to Margaret, he wished from the bottom of his heart that his half. brother had not died, or that his step-mother had carried her secret to the grave, in which she had been deposited only a few weeks previous. His reverie, unpleasing as it was, received a more unpleasing interruption, when, soon after dusk, his principal valet knocked at his door with a message from the eternal Baron, who craved permis. sion to solicit the honor of an interview; and on being desired to walk in, proceeded to demonstrate, in a speech of half an hour's length, the propriety, and the expediency and duty, of his illustrious hearer's presence in the grand drawing-room, where all the Vons of both sexes were now assembled. Max would have gone to a penitentiary to escape from the Baron's eloquence; and although he expected to be bored most dreadfully through a long evening, he knew not how to escape; he had so recently become a prince, that he thought himself bound to do whatever was required of him; and though his reverence for grand dukes and other such personages was almost annihilated, he lacked as yet the spirit to have his own way, and indeed almost the faculty of desiring, much more of determining for himself. His expectations were by no means fallacious, as touching the boring. The fashionable entertainments at the drawing-rooms of the Grand Duke of Pfaffenheimer were cards, chess, and conversation; for the first two of which he had neither taste nor skill, and half an hour's experiment satisfied him as to the quality of the lat ter. He tried his illustrious father, and was bored about butterflies; the field-marshals prosed about sieges and battles of which he had never heard, and the courtiers talked about eating and operas; and as for the ladies, they were all old, formal, and ugly; and persisted in paying him compliments that first made him ashamed of himself and then threw him into a passion. If there had been one pretty girl in the room he would have been content, but it was too much to be worried for three or four hours by a set of flattering old tabbies, who all took snuff, and told him he was the handsomest prince in the world; and poor Max was driven at last, in perfect despair, to a succession of tiresome hits at backgammon with his particular friend the Baron, who followed close at his heels wherever he went. There were, to be sure, a party of young men present-sons of the field-marshals and other court dignitaries of Pfaffenberg; and they seemed to be rather merry together at one end of the room, being allowed the entrée by some nominal title of "officers in attendance," "pages of honor," or something of that nature; but no sooner had Max, watching his opportunity when all the grandees were absorb. ed in their play, contrived to approach the only set in the room among whom there seemed to be any thing like real enjoyment, than they all stood as grave and as still as so many owls, as in duty bound, before the Crown Prince of Pfaffenheimer. So, as I said before, Max played backgammon with the Baron Von Dummkopf all the rest of the evening. To be concluded in our next. PLATONIC. STRANGE power the lovely forms of Nature have |