The door at the further end opened, and in streamed a crowd. Then tottered in ancient representations of the twelve "apostles," clothed in long violet robes, bound round the waist with white bands striped with red, and with violet caps on their heads: on they tottered, supported on either side by some poor relative, an old peasant-woman, a stalwart man in a black velvet jacket, and bright black boots reaching to the knee, or by a young, buxom girl in her holiday costume of bright apron and gay bodice. On they come, feeble, wrinkled, with white locks falling on their violet apparel, with palsied hands resting on the strong arms that supported them--the oldest being a hundred and one, the youngest eighty-seven years old! My eyes swam with sudden tears. There was a deal of trouble in mounting them upon their long snowy throne; that crimson step was a great mountain for their feeble feet and stiff knees to climb. But at last they were all seated, their poor friends standing behind them. A man in black marshaled them like little school-children; he saw that all sat properly, and then began pulling off a black shoe and stocking from the right foot of each. There, with drooped heads and folded withered hands, they sat meekly expectant. A group of twelve little girls, in lilac print frocks and silver swallow-tailed caps, headed by an old woman in similar lilac and silver costume, took its place to the right of the old men in a little knot; they were twelve orphans who are clothed and educated by the queen, and who receive a present on this day. The hall at the further end was by this time filled with bright uniforms--blue, scarlet, white, and green. In front were seen King Max and his brothers, also in their uniforms; numbers of ladies and children; and choristers in white robes, who flitted, cloud-like, into a small raised seat, set apart for them in a dark corner behind the uniforms. A bevy of priests in gold, violet, blue, and black robes, with burning tapers and swinging censers, enter; prostrate themselves before the king of Bavaria, and before the King of Hosts, as typified to them on the altar; they chant, murmur, and prostrate themselves again and again. Incense fills the hall with its warm, odorous breath. They present open books to the king and princes. And now the king, ungirding his sword, which is received by an attendant gentleman, approaches the oldest "apostle;" he receives the golden ewer, as it is handed from one brother to another; he bends himself over the old foot; he drops a few drops of water upon it; he receives a snowy napkin from the princes, and lays it daintily over the honored foot; he again bows over the second, and so on, through the whole twelve; a priest, with a cloth bound round his loins, finishing the drying of the feet. A different scene must that have been in Jerusalem, some eighteen hundred years ago!