The Great Day arrived at last; and Mr. Richard Avenel, from his dressing-room window, looked on the scene below as Hannibal or Napoleon looked from the Alps on Italy. It was a scene to gratify the thought of conquest, and reward the labors of ambition. Placed on a little eminence stood the singers from the mountains of the Tyrol, their high-crowned hats and filagree buttons and gay sashes gleaming in the sun. Just seen from his place of watch, though concealed from the casual eye, the Hungarian musicians lay in ambush amidst a little belt of laurels and American shrubs. Far to the right lay what had once been called (_horresco referens_) the duckpond, where--_Dulce sonant tenui gutture carmen aves_. But the ruthless ingenuity of the head artificer had converted the duckpond into a Swiss lake, despite grievous wrong and sorrow to the _assuetum innocuumque genus_--the familiar and harmless habitants, who had been all expatriated and banished from their native waves. Large poles twisted with fir branches, stuck thickly around the lake, gave to the waters the becoming Helvetian gloom. And here, beside three cows all bedecked with ribbons, stood the Swiss maidens destined to startle the shades with the _Ranz des Vaches_. To the left, full upon the sward, which it almost entirely covered, stretched the great Gothic marquee, divided into two grand sections--one for the _dancing_, one for the _dejeune_. The day was propitious--not a cloud in the sky. The musicians were already tuning their instruments; figures of waiters--hired of Gunter--trim and decorous, in black trowsers and white waistcoats, passed to and fro the space between the house and the marquee. Richard looked and looked; and as he looked he drew mechanically his razor across the strop; and when he had looked his fill, he turned reluctantly to the glass and shaved! All that blessed morning he had been too busy, till then, to think of shaving.