Helene, in particular, never tired of gazing between the chinks of the fence of cloven pine-wood at the great russet-colored beasts with their flashing white teeth, over which the heavy dewlaps fell.

And when my father, with his red livery upon him and a loaded whip in his hand, once a day opened the tall, narrow door and went within, we thought him brave as a god.

Then the way the fierce beasts shrank cowering from him, the fashion in which they crouched on their bellies and heaved their shoulders up without taking their hind quarters off the ground, equally delighted and surprised us.
"Your father is almost as great a man as _my_ father," said the Princess Helene, who, however, was rapidly forgetting her dignity.

Indeed, already it had become little more than a fairy-tale to her.

And that was perhaps as well.
One day, when I was about thirteen, or a little older, my father came out with a new short mantle in his hand, red like his own.
"Come hither, Hugo Gottfried!" he said, for he had learned the trick of the name from Helene.
I went to him tardy-foot, greatly wondering.
"Here, chick," he said, in his kindly fashion, "it is time you were beginning to learn your duties.