The envoy rises, but not shakes off that horror of repulsion. Somewhere, as he stands up and steps aside, a voice seems prating of "the Count his master's known munificence," of "just pretence to dowry," of the "fair daughter's self" being nevertheless the object. . . . But in a hot resistless impulse, he turns off; one must remove one's self from such proximity. Same air shall not be breathed, nor same ground trod. . . . Still the voice pursues him, sharply a little now for his lack of the due deference: ". . . Nay, we'll go Together down, sir," --and slowly (since a rupture must not be brought about by _him_) the envoy acquiesces. They begin to descend the staircase. But the visitor has no eyes for "wonders" now--he has seen the wonder, has heard the horror. . . . His host is all unwitting. Strange, that the guest can pass these glories, but everybody is not a connoisseur. One of them, however, must be pointed out: ". . . Notice Neptune, though, Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity, Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me." . . . Something else getting "stopped"! The envoy looks. + + + + + But lo, she is alive again! This time she is in distant Northern lands, or _was_, for now (and, strangely, we thank Heaven for it) we know not where she is. Wherever it is, she is happy. She has been saved, as by flame; has been snatched from _her_ Duke, and borne away to joy and love--by an old gipsy-woman! No lover came for her: it was Love that came, and because she knew Love at first sight and sound, she saved herself. The old huntsman of her husband's Court tells the story to a traveller whom he calls his friend. "What a thing friendship is, world without end!" It happened thirty years ago; the huntsman and the Duke and the Duchess all were young--if the Duke was ever young! He had not been brought up at the Northern castle, for his father, the rough hardy warrior, had been summoned to the Kaiser's court as soon as his heir was born, and died there, "At next year's end, in a velvet suit . . . Petticoated like a herald, In a chamber next to an ante-room Where he breathed the breath of page and groom, What he called stink, and they perfume." The "sick tall yellow Duchess" soon took the boy to Paris, where she belonged, being (says our huntsman) "the daughter of God knows who." So the hall was left empty, the fire was extinguished, and the people were railing and gibing. But in vain they railed and gibed until long years were past, "and back came our Duke and his mother again." "And he came back the pertest little ape That ever affronted human shape; Full of his travel, struck at himself. You'd say, he despised our bluff old ways? --Not he!"