and down the requisite number of times as a fulfilment of the vow." This was done, and it was found that by pacing the gallery three hours a day for four years would be enough. The Prince had been walking for two years when a scruple suggested itself. Between Saxony and Palestine occurred seas to traverse and mountains to be crossed. Again he had recourse to his Confessor. "Set your mind at ease," said the priest. "Put a pan of water on the floor, and place chairs about. Jump the water and clear the chairs, and that will suffice. The pan of water shall be the Mediterranean, and the chairs will serve as the Carpathians, the Alps, the Balkans, the Alma Dagh and the Lebanons."
"But," said the Crown Prince, "a pan may be rather large to clear, if like my hip-bath."
"A slop-pail will do," said the Confessor, "for into the Mediterranean are emptied the dirty waters of the Tiber, the Nile—that torrent of mud—the Rhone, finally, the Po. But mind and have painted or enamelled on it the name Mediterranean."
The story was of course well known in Dresden, and told with great mirth by the pastors. That there was some truth in it is certain, for M. de Circourt in the French Embassy at the Court of Saxony, who had been intimate with the King and Prince, witnessed the latter often on his pilgrimage, jumping over the chairs. He told this to Mr. Nassau Senior. Circourt does not mention the substitute for the Mediterranean; that may have been an improvement of the story by the pastors. If I am not mistaken, the Confessor was Father Schneider, whom the Pope created Bishop of Athos, where there exists not a single Romanist. For this favour the King of Saxony paid twenty thousand thaler.
King Frederick Augustus II met with a fatal accident ten years after our meeting him in the Saxon Switzerland. On August 9, 1854, when aged fifty-seven, he was driving in Tyrol, on a botanical excursion; when near Imst, in the valley of the Inn, the carriage was upset, and one of the post-horses in its fright kicked out, and struck the King on the back of his head. He did not recover consciousness. He was carried into the nearest tavern, where he died of lesion of the brain. The body was taken to Augsburg, where it was embalmed and then transported to Dresden, where it was buried in the Court church.
