“Ach, my dear London!  How moch should I enjoy you if I were free!”

For the benefit of those who do not know the Baron either personally or by repute, he may briefly be described as an admirably typical Teuton.  When he first visited England (some five years previously) he stood for Bavarian manhood in the flower; now, you behold the fruit.  As magnificently mustached, as ruddy of skin, his eye as genial, and his impulses as hearty; he added to-day to these two more stone of Teutonic excellences incarnate.

In his ingenuous glance, as in the more rounded contour of his waistcoat, you could see at once that fate had dealt kindly with him.  Indeed, to hear him sigh was so unwonted an occurrence that the Baroness looked up with an air of mild surprise.

“My dear Rudolph,” said she, “you should really open the window.  You are evidently feeling the heat.”

“No, not ze heat,” replied the Baron.

He did not turn his head towards her, and she looked at him more anxiously.

“What is it, then?  I have noticed a something strange about you ever since we landed at Dover.  Tell me, Rudolph!”

Thus adjured, he cast a troubled glance in her direction.  He saw a face whose mild blue eyes and undetermined mouth he still swore by as the standard by which to try all her inferior sisters, and a figure whose growing embonpoint yearly approached the outline of his ideal hausfrau.  But it was either St. Anthony or one of his fellow-martyrs who observed that an occasional holiday from the ideal is the condiment in the sauce of sanctity; and some such reflection perturbed the Baron at this moment.

“It is nozing moch,” he answered.

“Oh, I know what it is.  You have grown so accustomed to seeing the same people, year after year—­the Von Greifners, and Rosenbaums, and all those.  You miss them, don’t you?  Personally, I think it a very good thing that you should go abroad and be a diplomatist, and not stay in Fogelschloss so much; and you’ll soon make loads of friends here.  Mother comes to us next week, you know.”

“Your mozzer is a nice old lady,” said the Baron slowly.  “I respect her, Alicia; bot it vas not mozzers zat I missed just now.”

“What was it?”

“Life!” roared the Baron, with a sudden outburst of thundering enthusiasm that startled the Baroness completely out of her composure.  “I did have fun for my money vunce in London.  Himmel, it is too hot to eat great dinners and to vear clothes like a monkey-jack.”

“Like a what?” gasped the Baroness.

To hear the Baron von Blitzenberg decry the paraphernalia and splendors of his official liveries was even more astonishing than his remarkable denunciation of the pleasures of the table, since to dress as well as play the part of hereditary grandee had been till this minute his constant and enthusiastic ambition.

“A meat-jack, I mean—­or a—­I know not vat you call it.  Ach, I vant a leetle fun, Alicia.”