Among the crowd of notabilities grouped around the celebrities, such as M. de Metternich and the Field-Marshal Prince de Schwartzenberg, was the young Prince C---- de F----, the son of a king, the brother of a king to-be, yet who, nevertheless, was as simple and unaffected as he was handsome and clever. A circumstance most trifling in appearance had made him for the last few days the subject of all comments and the object of all observation. In the shape of a floral decoration, he wore simply a daisy in his buttonhole and nothing else. Of course, renewed each day, the modest village flower was a proof of careful search at a season when the snow-covered fields had none to offer to the rustic swain. No doubt some tender recollection, some thought proceeding direct from the heart, was hidden under this humble emblem. It was one of the many love-stories enacted while the Congress was supposed to be unravelling the tangled skein of Europe’s diplomacy. The air of Vienna seemed positively teeming with them, and their secrets were not difficult to read. The latest was no exception to the others. It was soon known that the modest flower of the field reminded the young prince of a cherished name, that of the Comtesse de ----. One day these two were strolling through the imperial hot-houses, and, love being superstitious, they hit upon the idea of consulting the future with regard to the duration and the depth of a feeling constituting their happiness. The comtesse plucked a daisy, interrogated it according to usage, and the last petal brings the ardently wished-for word ‘passionately.’ Naturally the word is welcomed by a mutual smile, there is an exchange of significant glances--of those glances that say as plainly as words, ‘You’re understood.’ The prince plucks another flower and fastens it into his buttonhole. The matter, however, did not end there; the oracle had been believed; heaven had received the pledges, while the head-gardener at Schönbrunn had received something more substantial in the shape of a hundred florins for the fortunate pot of daisies. A flower placed each morning near his heart reminded the lover of a pledge which, as a rule, is kept more faithfully in cottages than in Courts.