"I mentioned my idea to His Excellency
my uncle, who is Sub-deputy Over-taker-off
of Nightcaps to the All-Highest, and he told
me at once that I must make known my idea
to His Royal Majesty. Delighted, flattered,
perhaps intoxicated with the prospect of so
much honour; hoping that my name would
find a place hereafter among the famous of
the Fatherland; I could neither sleep by
night nor eat by day after my uncle had
formally solicited an audience for me; and I
thought of nothing else but how I could
explain my great idea in the most flowing
language, and with the best effect. At length
the momentous day came; my uncle received
a note from a quarter too august to be
named, commanding me to attend at the
palace on the following day in uniform.

"It was a dreadful moment, it makes my
hair still stand upright to think of it. I had
no uniform! What was to be done? I had
been, it is true, midshipman of the tenth
class in one of the unbuilt ships of the German
Navy, but since that institution exists no
longer, I felt a certain delicacy about hanging
out false colours if I wore the uniform. I
took counsel of my uncle, however, and he
recommended me to do so fearlessly. 'Cut
boldly, replied the augur, and the king cut it
through accordingly.' In other words, I
resolved to wear the only uniform to which I
could pretend; and, by standing over the
tailor night and day (a dreadful duty, for he
smoked bad tobacco all the time), my clothes
were ready by the time appointed, and behold
me—strapped down and buckled in to the last
verge of human endurance—at last in the
ante-room of the King. It was full of officers,
buckled in, and strapped down, and puffed
out in very much the same manner as I was
myself, and they must have been equally
uncomfortable, save that they were more used
to it. I do not know how I supported the
wretched two hours that followed, and though
I and my uncle had spent more than a year
in endeavouring by every possible means to
obtain the unspeakable honour which had at
length been vouchsafed to me, strangling,
panting, stifling, throttling, red in the face,
tingling in the hands, burning and singing in
the ears, tightening in the nose, my only wish
was now to get well out of it; and, awaiting
death or delivery, I at length sunk down
upon a chair, resting myself at the extreme
edge of it, and tilting up my heels that by
humouring my straps and buckles as much as
possible I might get the only mockery of
ease which was attainable.

"The officers clanked their sabres and
strutted about, and brought their two armed
heels sharply together for salute, when there
was a new arrival; and then, as the door closed
and all was again silent, looked straight before
them and breathed hard. I am sure there
was not a man in that room who could have
bent his neck in any direction, had his life
depended on the exertion.

"The second hour of my waiting had long
passed by, and my crick in the neck was fast
giving way to and yielding before an intolerable
pain in the back which had just set in,
when the folding-doors were at last thrown
wide open, and an aide-de-camp coming in
dismissed the officers on duty for the day,
while about half-an-hour afterwards I was
informed that it was impossible for the King
to grant me an audience.

"I do not know whether relief at being able
to unbutton my coat, or pain at the failure of
my hopes, was the first feeling in my mind;
but I do know that I left the palace with a
sigh at the suffering I had undergone, which
carried off several out-of-the-way buttons in
its discharge.

"My uncle was waiting for me, expecting
that my face, perhaps, might have caught
some of the glory of Majesty during the
interview he expected me to have had; and
he looked extremely blank when he found the
result of my morning. Recovering himself,
however, he made many sagacious reflections
on the grave cares of kings, and how proud
and grateful their subjects ought to be for
the sleepless anxiety which ever watches over
them. Unluckily, my uncle hit upon so
much excellent rhetoric while pursuing this
train of thought, that he could not help
haranguing on the subject in the evening at
a thé dansant given by the Grand Mistress
of the Clotheshorses.

" 'Ah!' said she, 'the dear King! he was
so pleased and amused this morning. It was
delightful to see His Majesty, and the dear
Queen, too. Oh Count!'

" 'To be sure;' said my uncle very grandly.
'Great affairs are the pleasures of great minds;
I hear all the Ministers waited upon His
Majesty this morning.'

" 'To be sure they did, the tiresome fellows.
They never know when they are wanted.
But not one got an audience—not one, I
assure you, my dear Count.'

" 'Not one?' replied my uncle. 'Ah, His
Majesty is a wonderful man to carry on the
affairs of the nation by his own unassisted
reflections.'

" 'Fi donc! fiddle-de-dee!' replied the
Grand Mistress, annoyed into being natural.
'I am afraid, Count, you are a democrat?
The dear King and the sweet Queen were
teaching their Pinch (her sweet Majesty's
lap-dog) to walk upright with a cocked hat
on. They spent all the morning about it,
and I never knew His Majesty in such
delightful spirits.'

"And this was the end of my Great Idea;
for when I got home, I found that the
police, in seizing the papers of a newspaper
correspondent who lived next door to me, on
the same floor, had, in their zeal, paid a visit
to my rooms also; and, finding some
important-looking papers, had seized them at
once, assured that there could be no good in
them."