His wife was enchanted. From the beginning she had been alarmed when his miracle of a niece was brought into the house. The ostentatious partiality with which he introduced her into society produced results which went beyond his previsions. The crowd of worshippers kept growing greater and denser; after the episode with the King the enthusiasm rose to a kind of frenzy for a time. The rate of speed grew with the number; the colonel struggled to keep up like a broken-winded horse. The bell rings a second time, there is a movement in the crowd, renewed clanking of spurs and swords, waving of hands, vociferous greetings. The heroine of the hour saluted, waved farewell for the thousandth time, gay words were spoken, smiles and bows were rapidly dispensed with cheerful grace. She was quite equal to the situation! The large, checked travelling dress, the light hat with the veil now hanging down from it, now floating in the wind, the haughty poise of the head, the perfect figure, all this stood in the sunshine of the homage round her. Surely it was into a golden carriage drawn by white doves that she was stepping? For the moment, it was no farther than to her mother's side at the open carriage-door, whence she smiled down to the colonel on one side, the general on the other, the ladies round them. Farther back still her eyes fell on all the uplifted moustaches, the light ones, the brown, the black, the dyed, the thin moustaches, the thick, the curved, and the inane, the drooping, the smartly curled. Among that melancholy and shaggy crowd a few clean-shaven faces looked like those of Swedish tenors. "I hope you will have a pleasant journey," said the old general. The gallant horseman was too discreet to try to say anything more marked. "Thank you for the pleasure you have given us this winter, my girl!" It was the colonel's shrill voice. The bystanders should see what a fatherly comrade he could be. "Yes, I've often pitied you this winter, uncle," was the answer he received. "Now you must have a thorough rest in the summer!" The colonel's wife laughed. It was the signal that all the rest must laugh.