I will therefore introduce and lead him out on the dancing-floor of to-day's joy, not at all as bridegroom, but, in every instance,--just as we speak of the crown without the crowned head,--merely as Bridegroom's-coat, so as not to make him ridiculous. Albano rode along with a breast full of indignation, scorn, and pity beside this victim of dark state policy, and simply could not comprehend how it was that Luigi did not send the German gentleman, that hired axe and uprooter of his family tree, with one kick far behind him howling. Good youth! a prince more easily sets himself free from men whom he loves, than from such as he has full long hated; for his fear is stronger than his love. The great-hearted, never narrow-chested, always broad-breasted youth found to-day, in his solemn, painful frame of mind, everything tragical, noble and ignoble, greater than it was. He showed, indeed, only a fiery eye and animated countenance, because he was too young and modest to make a display of personal grief; but beneath the eye, which was fixed on the spot of blue in the heavens where his dark clouds were this day to break away or fall upon him, stood the glistening tear-drop. The coming evening, into which he had so often looked as into a hell, and full as often as into a heaven, stood now, as a confused medium between the two, so near,--ah, hard by him! A throng of kindred feelings attended him to the (in his opinion unhappy) bride of--his father and this prince. A quarter of a mile the other side of Hohenfliess might already be seen jogging on her _Gibbon_, well known among all natural historians--not among the politicians--by the long arms which this owner of the Moluccas and Ape notoriously carries. "Where is my Gibbon?" the Princess usually asked (even supposing she had in her hand, at the moment, the English namesake,--the historian with long nails and short sentences against the Christians) when she wanted her Longimanus.