It is beautiful in its rococco way, swept up to on its
terrace by most noble staircases, and swaggered over by baroque
allegories of all sorts: Everywhere the statues outnumbered the visitors,
who may have been kept away by the rain; the statues naturally did not
mind it.
Sometime in the midst of their sight-seeing the Marches had dinner in a
mildewed restaurant, where a compatriotic accent caught their ear in a
voice saying to the waiter, "We are in a hurry." They looked round and
saw that it proceeded from the pretty nose of a young American girl, who
sat with a party of young American girls at a neighboring table. Then
they perceived that all the people in that restaurant were Americans,
mostly young girls, who all looked as if they were in a hurry. But
neither their beauty nor their impatience had the least effect with the
waiter, who prolonged the dinner at his pleasure, and alarmed the Marches
with the misgiving that they should not have time for the final palace on
their list.
This was the palace where the father of Frederick, the mad old Frederick
William, brought up his children with that severity which Solomon urged
but probably did not practise. It is a vast place, but they had time for
it all, though the custodian made the most of them as the latest comers
of the day, and led them through it with a prolixity as great as their
waiter's.
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