Oh how I long for the merry schoolboy’s laugh, the clatter of the pony’s canter, the watch-dog’s bark, the squire breathing the morning air amid his woods, that tell of England! How I fancy a peep into that large drawing-room, whose windows open to the greensward, letting in a view of distant mountains and far-receding foreground, through an atmosphere heavy with the rose and the honeysuckle! Lovely as is the scene, with foliage tinted in every hue, from the light sprayey hazel to the dull pine or the dark copper beech--how I prefer to look within where _they_ are met who call this ‘home!’ And what a paradise is such a home!---- But I must think no more of these things. I am a lone and solitary man; my happiness is cast in a different mould, nor shall I mar it by longings which never can be realised. While I sat thus musing, my companion of the _banquette_, of whom I had hitherto seen nothing but a blue-cloth cloak and a travelling-cap, came ‘slap down’ on me with a snort that choked him, and aroused me. ‘I ask your pardon, sir,’ said he in a voice that betrayed Middlesex most culpably. ‘Je suis--that is, j’ai----’ ‘Never mind, sir; English will answer every purpose,’ cried I. ‘You have had a sound sleep of it.’ ‘Yes, Heaven be praised! I get over a journey as well as most men. Where are we now--do you happen to know?’ ‘That old castle yonder, I suspect, is the Alten Burg,’ said I, taking out my guidebook and directory. ‘The Alten Burg was built in the year 1384, by Carl Ludwig Graf von Löwenstein, and is not without its historic associations-----’ ‘Damn its historic associations!’ said my companion, with an energy that made me start. ‘I wish the devil and his imps had carried away all such trumpery, or kept them to torture people in their own hot climate, and left us free here. I ask pardon, sir! I beseech you to forgive my warmth; you would if you knew the cause, I’m certain.’ I began to suspect as much myself, and that my neighbour being insane, was in no wise responsible for his opinions; when he resumed-- ‘Most men are made miserable by present calamities; some feel apprehensions for the future; but no one ever suffered so much from either as I do from the past. No, sir,’ continued he, raising his voice, ‘I have been made unhappy from those sweet souvenirs of departed greatness which guidebook people and tourists gloat over. The very thought of antiquity makes me shudder; the name of Charlemagne gives me the lumbago; and I’d run a mile from a conversation about Charles the Bold or Philip van Artevelde. I see what’s passing in your mind; but you ‘re all wrong. I’m not deranged, not a bit of it; though, faith, I might be, without any shame or disgrace.’