Whether he was in love with the Archduchess of Austria or not he was at no pains to discover. But his instinct for adventure was now on edge--the youth in him was rampant; New York was non-existent; his weeks of rest in Europe, passed almost entirely in solitude and sunshine, had made his pulses full and quick; he was ready for anything, and his will had never set itself more squarely. Here were all the high elements of romance at last; moreover, when he awakened in the night and heard the distant wail or rush of the Chardash, he trembled and experienced a sensation of being stabbed by something that was both sharp and sweet. The attitude of the Archduchess, the insurmountable barrier she had raised, but whetted his determination to know her. With all his contempt for monarchy, he was still too wise in its ways to make the mistake of republican approach. He was unconventional, but he was also a man of the world; while he would not hesitate to insist upon talking with any sovereign as man to man, with no more formality than he would yield to the President of the United States, he knew that to walk up to a palace door and demand admittance, even to his sister’s apartments, would be merely to make an ass of himself. Moreover, he had long since learned that one of the secrets of man’s victory over life is never to court certain failure. The afternoon before, he had crossed over to Buda and walked all round the palace. The great gates on the Danube looked impervious to battering-rams. On the farther side of the court-yard the central portion of the palace, which was of a symmetrical height in front, was built straight down to the street behind in no less than eighteen tiers of rooms. There were guards everywhere, and it looked as impregnable as a fortress. The gardens surrounded the front and south of the palace. At the north end were more guards, and just without the great court-yard, easy of access at its northern extremity, its southern gates closed upon the private gardens, was the guard-house. Connecting the vast front of the palace with the mass at the rear of the court-yard were galleries and many rooms. The private apartments of the royal family did not look upon the court, but were in the extension beyond it, above that sacred portion of the grounds to which the public was never admitted. No princess had ever been more securely intrenched. The wild idea of disguising himself as a working-man, and obtaining entrance to the portion of the palace as yet unfinished within, had invaded Fessenden’s brain and been dismissed. In that huge labyrinth a man would be lost and found many times before he was escorted to the guard-house.