village-bells - these were the recollections of the Grunewald
tourist.

North and east the foothills of Grunewald sank with varying profile
into a vast plain. On these sides many small states bordered with
the principality, Gerolstein, an extinct grand duchy, among the
number. On the south it marched with the comparatively powerful
kingdom of Seaboard Bohemia, celebrated for its flowers and mountain
bears, and inhabited by a people of singular simplicity and
tenderness of heart. Several intermarriages had, in the course of
centuries, united the crowned families of Grunewald and Maritime
Bohemia; and the last Prince of Grunewald, whose history I purpose
to relate, drew his descent through Perdita, the only daughter of
King Florizel the First of Bohemia. That these intermarriages had
in some degree mitigated the rough, manly stock of the first
Grunewalds, was an opinion widely held within the borders of the
principality. The charcoal burner, the mountain sawyer, the wielder
of the broad axe among the congregated pines of Grunewald, proud of
their hard hands, proud of their shrewd ignorance and almost savage
lore, looked with an unfeigned contempt on the soft character and
manners of the sovereign race.

The precise year of grace in which this tale begins shall be left to
the conjecture of the reader. But for the season of the year
(which, in such a story, is the more important of the two) it was
already so far forward in the spring, that when mountain people
heard horns echoing all day about the north-west corner of the
principality, they told themselves that Prince Otto and his hunt
were up and out for the last time till the return of autumn.