a snow-dark morning, and disappear waddling into the Schloss. At the beginning of January there were individuals going about the town who swore that the man who, this time also in the morning and in a fur coat and top-hat, had passed by the grinning negro in plush, through the door of Delphinenort, and, with feverish haste, had flung himself into a cab which was waiting for him, was undoubtedly our Finance Minister, Dr. Krippenreuther. And at the same time there appeared in the semi-official Courier the first preparatory notices of rumours touching an impending betrothal in the Grand Ducal House—tentative notifications which, becoming carefully clearer and clearer, at last exhibited the two names, Klaus Heinrich and Imma Spoelmann, in clear print next each other.… It was no new collocation, but to see it in black on white had the same effect as strong wine.
It was most absorbing to notice what attitude, in the journalistic discussions which ensued, our enlightened and open-minded press took up towards the popular aspect of the affair, namely, the prophecy, which had won too great political significance not to demand education and in telligence to deal satisfactorily with it. Sooth-saying, chiromancy, and similar magic, explained the Courier, were, so far as the destiny of individuals was concerned, to be relegated to the murky regions of superstition. They belonged to the grey middle ages, and no ridicule was too severe for the idiots who (very rarely in the cities nowa days) let experienced pick-pockets empty their purses in return for reading, from their hands, the cards, or coffee-grounds, their insignificant fortunes, or for invoking sound health, for a homoeopathic cure, or for freeing their sick cattle from invading demons—as if the Apostle had not already asked: "Doth God take care for oxen?"
But, surveyed as a whole and restricted to decisive turns in the destiny of whole nations or dynasties, the proposition
