Once at the seaside a faithful forester, a true and loyal German subject, approached the Court physician, who was in attendance on the royal children, paddling in the “briny” a short distance away, and expressed his unmitigated sorrow at the misfortune suffered by the Imperial Family, in that their only daughter should be so deeply afflicted. At the moment one of those healthy spells of _zanking_ happened to take place between the Princess and her brother. “Do you hear that?” said the genial doctor. “Can you hear your deaf-and-dumb Princess talking?” She was indeed talking in tones that carried to quite a distance. “Go a little nearer and listen.” The man stopped a short distance away, and drank in the sounds as though they were heavenly music. The poor afflicted child of his imagination fled for ever. He turned with his face radiating joy. “_Gott sei dank!_” he ejaculated. “Now I know it’s not true, but I was always afraid. People always said she was _taub-stumm_. Now I can tell them what fools they are. I’ve heard Her Royal Highness with my own ears.” He departed joyously to spread the glad tidings. But many people are hard to convince. One dear old lady in Berlin whom I knew was always making doubtful inquiries of me on this subject, and, like Thomas, refused to believe. “Ach, yes!” she would say, “of course you dare not tell me the truth. You have to _say_ that she is all right.” “Of course,” I mocked, “it is essential for a deaf-and-dumb person to have an English teacher, isn’t it--and another one for French? She is deaf-and-dumb in three languages.” The lady was still doubtful, and I left her deeply pondering. After three days we left Donau-Eschingen for Strasburg, a very beautiful town, disfigured by a terribly ugly modern palace, which the Emperor calls the “Railway-palace,” as he considers it to be of that hideously harsh, painful form of architecture we have been accustomed to bear with, for purely utilitarian purposes. “They built it before my time,” he hastens to tell every one. “Makes me feel ill every time I see it.” It was a huge, square gaunt building, surrounded by a palisaded garden, which contained not a solitary spot where any one could be free from the attentions of the crowd.