But the Prince's favourite recreation of all was going a-shooting. In the near neighbourhood of Bonn there is no very ambitious sport. The more venturesome spirits go as far as the Eifel Mountains, there to kill wild-boar and red-deer. For this the Prince grudged the time. So he had to be content with hares and birds, an occasional roebuck--and, I dare say, in those, early days he now and then brought down a fox, which in Germany is reckoned rather good sport. When, in 1858, the Crown Prince, Emperor Frederick, came back from his wedding, and found the officers of the Deutz Cuirassiers drawn up in line at the Cologne station to salute him, he singled out Count F----, of M--dorf, to present more especially to his bride. "I must present Count F---- to you," he said; "it was on his estate that I shot my first fox." Either Count F----'s conscience stung him, or else he realised better than the Crown Prince in what light vulpicide is regarded in the Princess's country: "It was not really a fox, Sir," he explained with some embarrassment; "it was a wild cat." There were water-fowl near Brühl; there used to be a heronry there. But I do not think the Prince went in that direction. His ordinary shooting-ground was near Bergheim, on the other side of the Rhine and, beyond the Venusberg, in the Kottenforst, a long stretch of forest, not everywhere well-timbered, in which Peter Stamm had a "Jagd," to which of course the Prince was welcome. Wherever the forest was a little ragged there were, of course, black game. And then, in spring, to the Prince's great delight, there was woodcock shooting. The "Schnepfenstrich" was his pet sport, and never was he to be seen more regularly driving his plain little trap out to Röttgen--where Stamm had his shooting--the faithful Peter always by his side--than in the four weeks which precede Palm Sunday, the season of all others sacred in Germany to woodcock shooting, for Oculi, da kommen sie; Laetare, das ist das wahre; Judica, sind sie auch noch da; Palmarum, Trallarum. The Latin words are the Lutheran calendar names for the four Sundays next before Easter. Often Stamm-hannes would be of the party--often also Everard Sator, another local Nimrod and horse-fancier, of Stamm's peculiar set, and acceptable to the Prince. And some of the Prince's more aristocratic companions would likewise occasionally join. But the Prince and Peter were in this matter inseparables, roughing it out on the wooded heights from sheer love of sport; and after that they would meet in the "Weinwirthschaft" and talk over their common experiences, being attentively overheard by a small company who reckoned it a privilege, however little they might know about shooting, to listen to these sportmen's tales, and bottle them up to retail to others after the Prince was gone.