When the last of the procession had vanished we were all driven out at once, and an army of housemaids with brooms entered and began to sweep up the dirt and litter which the people had left behind. It was strange that on the most ceremonious occasions, when people were waiting round red carpets to welcome royal guests, or ambassadors weighed down with state secrets were on the point of getting into their carriages after audiences with the Emperor, always a print-gowned housemaid with a broom made a jarring appearance, wielding her implement coolly in the midst of state functionaries as though sweeping were the most important business of life. Sometimes she had scarcely disappeared before royalty itself emerged. The Lutheran wedding-service is very simple. It begins with the long address of the clergyman to the bridal couple, admonishing them as to their duties to each other and the world at large. As everybody stands the whole time--for no chairs are admitted into the chapel, excepting one or two for specially exalted guests--this address is apt to appear longer than it really is. Each lady is in Court dress, wearing the regulation veil and long, heavy train which she must hold on her arm during the service, as it is not to be displayed until the _Defilir-Cour_ which follows immediately afterwards. From the chapel the newly-married pair walk into the adjacent _Weisser-Saal_, where with the Emperor and Empress they stand to receive the congratulations of the invited guests, who pass quickly before them bowing, the ladies with their trains spread out. When the bride and bridegroom have made several hundred bows and the _Cour_ is at an end, an adjournment is made to dinner, which is laid in several different rooms at small round tables, excepting the one where the royalties sit, which is fairly large. Here more quaint ceremonies take place. The Prince Fürstenberg as Marshal of the Court serves the Emperor with soup, and the other royal guests are also waited on by pages and gentlemen of birth, who take the dishes from the footmen. The Lord-High-Steward or _Truchsess_ pours out the wine, and in the middle of the dinner the Emperor proposes the health of the newly-married pair. The dinner, in spite of the attendant ceremonies, is not allowed to be too prolonged, for the great climax of these stately formalities still remains to be performed--the most beautiful, but perhaps for the hard-worked bridal pair also the most tiring of all--the famous Torch Dance, seen nowhere but at the Prussian Court, and when once seen, never to be forgotten.