noon
`` You are right ! Baroque is the thing for Wurzburg ; one ca n't enjoy Gothic here any more than one could enjoy baroque in Nuremberg . '' Reconciled in the rococo , they now called a carriage , and went to visit the palace of the prince-bishops who had so well known how to make the heavenly take the image and superscription of the worldly ; and they were jointly indignant to find it shut against the public in preparation for the imperialities and royalties coming to occupy it . They were in time for the noon guard-mounting , however , and Mrs. March said that the way the retiring squad kicked their legs out in the high martial step of the German soldiers was a perfect expression of the insolent militarism of their empire , and was of itself enough to make one thank Heaven that one was an American and a republican . She softened a little toward their system when it proved that the garden of the palace was still open , and yet more when she sank down upon a bench between two marble groups representing the Rape of Proserpine and the Rape of Europa . They stood each in a gravelled plot , thickly overrun by a growth of ivy , and the vine climbed the white naked limbs of the nymphs , who were present on a pretence of gathering flowers , but really to pose at the spectators , and clad them to the waist and shoulders with an effect of modesty never meant by the sculptor , but not displeasing . There was an old fountain near , its stone rim and centre of rock-work green with immemorial mould , and its basin quivering between its water-plants under the soft fall of spray .