What struck me immediately was its appearance of cleanliness, its perfect upkeep; not a paving-stone of the encircling footway displaced, not a brick of the foundation broken; the blinds which were well fastened had all their laths, and in the narrow open spaces of their shutters the window-panes flashed in the sun. I listened. No sound came to me from the castle or from the gray buildings. In the conservatory there was complete silence. One heard nothing but the vast hum of a burning afternoon. Then I summoned up my courage, and approaching stealthily, I raised one of the wooden sun-blinds and tried to look through the panes; but I could see nothing; they had been smeared on the inside with a whitish substance. It seemed more and more probable that Lerne had diverted the conservatory from its original use, and now abandoned himself there to any other culture than that of flowers. The idea of microbe broths simmering under the warm light seemed to me quite a happy inspiration. I moved round the glass house. Everywhere the same stuff smeared on the window-panes intercepted the view--rather thick stuff it appeared. The ventilation windows stood open but beyond my reach. The wings had no doors, and one could not get into the central part from the back. As I kept moving round scrutinizing the brick and the no less thick glass, I soon found myself on the _château_ side opposite my balcony. This position being unsheltered was dangerous. I thought I should have to return to my bedroom, and give up the supposed palace of microbes without examining the front. I limited my investigation therefore to a most disappointed glance--a glance, however, which suddenly let me know that the mystery lay open to me. The door was only pressed against the door-post, and the bolt which was quite free showed that some careless person had thought he had barred the door securely. Oh, Wilhelm, you priceless donkey! The moment I entered, my bacteriological hypothesis was at once destroyed. A whiff of floral perfumes welcomed me--a moist and warm whiff with a touch of nicotine in it. I paused in wonderment on the threshold. No hothouse--not even a royal one--has ever given me that impression of riotous luxury which I at first experienced. In that rotunda in the midst of all those sumptuous plants, the first sensation was that of bedazzlement. The whole gamut of greens was played in a chromatic scale on the keyboard of leaves, amid the multi-colored tones of flowers and fruit, and on tiers which climbed up to the cupola those splendors surged magnificently upward. But one’s eyes became accustomed to the sight, and my admiration grew somewhat less. Assuredly, however, for this Winter-Garden to arouse my admiration so immediately, it must have been composed of plants very remarkable in themselves, for in reality no attempt at harmony had brought about their arrangement.