From the eastern wing of the Renaissance Castle in Westerau the view over the Felber Valley was beautiful; far off one could see the rocky height where the towers of Castle Neideck rose against the horizon. In that wing resided Princess Isabella, the ruling prince’s younger daughter, with her lady-in-waiting, Fräulein von Martigny. The young Princess, only eighteen years old, often gazed longingly toward those ancestral towers, wishing she were there, to look far out over the open country, and then to travel through it, on and on and on. Here, in her father’s castle, with its aristocratic ennui, she felt as if she were in prison. I wonder which is the greater torture: a prison window that looks out upon high walls, or one with a beautiful view into the distance? One reminds us every hour that we are imprisoned; the other that we can not get away. And the Princess would have liked so much to fly away, but at her father’s court the rules of etiquette were observed as strictly as in a Spanish convent, particularly with regard to ladies. Isabella’s sister had entered a convent to escape the monotony of the castle, and in the convent she had been more at ease than in the castle. There was some analogy between the conditions of the warder of the old castle and the Princess of the new castle. As with all his heart Balzer desired marriage with Lizzie, but would not buy his happiness with the sacrifice of his castle, so with all her heart the Princess of the new castle desired liberty--to be free from her father’s house--but she would not buy her liberty by marriage with her cousin, Frederick, Count Vierstein. Everything slept at Westerau. When Isabella sat in her luxurious room it seemed to her that all four walls were yawning, and when she walked in the castle garden all the trees seemed to sleep, and the gods and goddesses of stone between the trimmed hedges of hornbeam were surely snoring. She arose in the morning at nine o’clock, because it was necessary for her to rest from the preceding day’s ennui, and when they put on her stockings while she was dressing, it often took half an hour to proceed from the right to the left foot. During the day she was never alone, not one minute; for Fräulein von Martigny, who was not only lady-in-waiting, but took the place of a mother, never left her side. A true feminine Minos in matters of etiquette, the old lady was also nervous and irritable. When the Princess had been washing and bathing during her morning toilet, Fräulein always kept a few steps away, asserting that she would just as easily catch cold by going near a newly washed being as by walking over a newly washed floor.