I felt so excited then, seeing them down there,--of all persons those I should have most desired in those very spots,--that I think I should have burst into tears but for a sudden and fresh diversion. While I had been watching my sister and brother, a murmur had begun to roll amidst the gathered throng, and just as the conductor came to the orchestra steps, at the bottom he arrested himself. The first stroke of ten had sounded from our little church, and simultaneously with that stroke the steward, bearing on his wand the blue rosette and bunch of oak-leaves, threw open the curtain of the archway under us and ushered into the appropriated space the party for whose arrival we auspiciously waited. I said Zittermayer arrested himself,--he waited respectfully until they were seated, and then bowed, but did not advance to salute them further. They also bowed, and he mounted the steps. I was enchanted at the decorum which prevailed at that moment; for, as it happened, it was a more satisfactory idea of homage than the most unmitigated applause on the occasion. The perfect stillness also reigned through Cherubini's overture, not one note of which I heard, though I played as well as any somnambule, for I need scarcely say I was looking at that party; and being blessed with a long sight, I saw as well as it was possible to see all that I required to behold. First in the line sat a lady, at once so stately and so young looking, that I could only conjecture she was, as she was, _his_ mother. A woman was she like, in the outlines of her beauty, to the Medicis and Colonnas, those queens of historic poesy; unlike in that beauty's aspect which was beneficent as powerful, though I traced no trait of semblance between her and her super-terrestrial son. She sat like an empress, dressed in black, with a superb eye-glass, one star of diamonds at its rim, in her hand; but still and stately, and unsmiling as she was, she was ever turned slightly towards him, who, placed by her side, almost nestled into the sable satin of her raiment. He was also dressed in black, this day, and held in those exquisite hands a tiny pair of gloves, which he now swung backwards and forwards in time to the movement of our orchestra, and then let fall upon the floor; when that stately mother would stoop and gather them up, and he would receive them with a flashing smile, to drop them again with inadvertence, or perhaps to slide into them his slender fingers. Hardly had I seen and known him before I saw and recognized another close beside him. If _he_ were small and sylphid, seated by his majestic mother, how tiny was that delicate satellite of his, who was nestled as close to his side as he to hers. It was my own, my little Starwood, so happily attired in a dove-colored dress, half frock, half coat, trimmed with silver buttons, and holding a huge nosegay in his morsels of hands. I had scarcely time to notice him after the first