There is a grotesque old carved gate to the palace of the Durchlaucht, from which you could expect none but a pantomime procession to pass. The place looks asleep; the courts are grass-grown and deserted. Is the Sleeping Beauty lying yonder, in the great white tower? What is the little army about? It seems a sham army: a sort of grotesque military. The only charge of infantry was this: one day when passing through the old town, looking for sketches. Perhaps they become croupiers at night. What can such a fabulous prince want with anything but a sham army? My favorite walk was in the ancient quarter of the town--the dear old fabulous quarter, away from the noisy actualities of life and Prince Lenoir's new palace--out of eye and earshot of the dandies and the ladies in their grand best clothes at the promenades--and the rattling whirl of the roulette wheel--and I liked to wander in the glum old gardens under the palace wall, and imagine the Sleeping Beauty within there. Some one persuaded us one day to break the charm, and see the interior of the palace. I am sorry we did. There was no Sleeping Beauty in any chamber that we saw; nor any fairies, good or malevolent. There was a shabby set of clean old rooms, which looked as if they had belonged to a prince hard put to it for money, and whose tin crown jewels would not fetch more than King Stephen's pantaloons. A fugitive prince, a brave prince struggling with the storms of fate, a prince in exile may be poor; but a prince looking out of his own palace windows with a dressing-gown out at elbows, and dunned by his subject washerwoman--I say this is a painful object. When they get shabby they ought not to be seen. "Don't you think so, Lady Kicklebury?" Lady Kicklebury evidently had calculated the price of the carpets and hangings, and set them justly down at a low figure. "These German princes," she said, "are not to be put on a level with English noblemen." "Indeed," we answer, "there is nothing so perfect as England: nothing so good as our aristocracy; nothing so perfect as our institutions." "Nothing! NOTHING!" says Lady K.