"Told him she wanted to marry him! Not I. Why, _liebe Frau_, I have not lived sixty-five and a half years in this world for nothing! If I let him suppose she was in love with him, that would be the very way to make him like her. So as I laid the cloth for the Herr Professor's _Abendtisch_, I remarked casually that Fraeulein Bettine Meyer was not at all a bad sort of woman really, and that she had some excellent qualities, if only she did not make herself so ridiculous. 'How ridiculous?' says he, sitting up. 'What does she do ridiculous, I should like to know?' 'Why, wears a false front and curls bought at Frau Koelsch's shop,' says I. 'Poor thing, she can't make herself look young and beautiful, whatever she does, and Frau Rittmeister Bernstorf was laughing at her the other day, and at the high heels and at the stuffing the _Schneiderin_ round the corner puts into her gowns to cover the angular bones! She would look much more respectable,' said I, 'if she would brush her scanty grey locks back, and smooth them with pomatum as I do, and wear a black lace _Muetze_ over them, instead of making herself the laughing-stock of Schleswig.' And away I walked. And the Professor ate no supper that night, and next day he left for his _Ferienausflug_, and never called to say good-bye to Fraeulein Meyer; and so I put the extinguisher on that little candle just as its flame was beginning to burn up, and--why! here we are at Mainz." And this is what I heard, and how I was entertained, in the "elektrische Bahn" on my little expedition from Wiesbaden to Mainz. I reflected, as I saw the Haushaelterin get down heavily with all the deliberation of her sixty-five and a half years, that feline amenities are much the same in Germany as in England; and I felt sorry for poor Fraeulein Meyer, who might have given up her small vanities and made pancakes and _Apfelkuchen_ for the Professor quite as well in the end as the Haushaelterin. The cathedral of Mainz was, of course, the object of our expedition. It dominates the city from afar, with its wonderful towers and pinnacles, making of Mainz (a commonplace city enough) a thing of beauty. From the shores of the Rhine we crossed a wide street planted with trees and lined on each hand with modern German houses of pinkish stone (covered with heavy sculpture and breaking out into countless balconies and bay windows), and soon found ourselves in the market-place. And here, indeed, one felt oneself in the Germany of bygone days. Instead of pseudo-classic buildings, heavy with meaningless ornamentation, we found beautiful old timber-framed houses, with deep eaves and wood carvings. On one of these I read: Zum Kurfuerstlichen Wappen. Erneuert in Jahr des Heils 1899.