But to return from this ludicrous interlude, the details of which the privy councillors narrate with the most self-assured satisfaction as evidence of the active zeal of their town functionary. The party on reaching the inn divided itself, the three gentlemen ascending the stairs, while the Princess Clementina hid herself in the carriage. Our friend the Kellnerin was still up, and met the gentlemen on the landing, "whereupon they seemed annoyed, and told me I might go to bed, for they did not require me any more." The girl once away in her bedroom, it was easy enough to bring the princess up stairs unobserved. Although we can without difficulty follow the whole undertaking from step to step, there is one point which the documents before us fail to clear up--when and where Mrs. Misset's maid took the place of the princess, and what became of her afterward. It seems to us that Wogan exaggerated the difficulties of the scheme, or at least omitted to take into account the astounding stupidity of the Kellnerin, and in fact of everybody with whom the party came in contact. For all that the Kellnerin observed, they might have dispensed with the "sick lady" altogether, and yet have driven away from the house with two princesses instead of one. Of such an extraordinarily unsophisticated nature was this simple handmaiden that, when helping the sick lady down stairs to the carriage, she noticed that the skirt of her dress was wet, and that the dress itself was of brown taffeta, similar to the one the princess generally wore (proving thereby that she had frequently seen the princess). Nevertheless, no suspicion crossed her mind, though she knew that the party had arrived in a closed carriage, and that the ladies had not gone out. Punctually at two o'clock the party drove off, the two ladies and two of the gentlemen inside, the third on horseback acting as outrider. At the very first station after Innsbruck, Schönberg on the Brenner road, some delay occurred, for the great depth of snow obliged them to add two more horses to the four they already had, and the whole house had to be roused. Nothing of importance seems to have occurred in crossing the high Brenner Pass, although the huge masses of snow on the slopes of the mountains threatened every minute to bury the travellers. At Trent they received the second check, which, from the results that seemed at first inevitable, was far more serious than that at Schönberg. That very morning the margravine of Baden had passed through Trent, and her numerous carriages had required every one of the post-horses stabled in the town. The postmaster, Count Wolkenstein, the very man whom the privy councillors had warned some months previously to keep a sharp lookout on all travellers, helped them out of the scrape by providing private horses--a matter of some difficulty.