Nothing of the kind, my dear. Travel by all means. There’s nothing will improve your French accent like a winter abroad; and as to your carriage and air, it is all-essential you should be pressed in the waltz by some dark-moustached Hungarian or tight-laced Austrian. Your German will fall all the more trippingly off your tongue that you have studied it in the land of beer and beetroot; while, as a safeguard against those distressing sensations of which shame and modesty are the parents, the air of the Rhine is sovereign, and its watering-places an unerring remedy. All I bargain for is, to be of the party. Let there be a corner in a portmanteau, or an imperial, a carriage-pocket, or a courier’s sack for me, and I’m content. If ‘John’ be your guide, let Arthur be your mentor. He’ll tell you of the roads; I, of the travellers. To him belong pictures and statues, churches, châteaux, and curiosities; _my_ province is the people--the living actors of the scene, the characters who walk the stage in prominent parts, and without some knowledge of whom your ramble would lose its interest. Occasionally, it is true, they may not be the best of company. Que voulez-vous? ‘If ever you travel, you mustn’t feel queer,’ as Mathews said or sung--I forget which. I shall only do my endeavour to deal more with faults than vices, more with foibles than failings. The eccentricities of my fellow-men are more my game than their crimes; and therefore do not fear that in my company I shall teach you bad habits, nor introduce you to low acquaintances; and above all, no disparagement--and it is with that thought I set out--no disparagement of me that I take you over a much- travelled track. If it be so, there’s the more reason you should know the company whom you are in the habit of visiting frequently; and secondly, if you accompany me here, I promise you better hereafter; and lastly, one of the pleasantest books that ever was written was the _Voyage autour de ma Chambre_. Come, then, is it agreed--are we fellow- travellers? You might do worse than take me. I’ll neither eat you up, like your English footmen, nor sell you to the landlord, like your German courier, nor give you over to brigands, like your Italian valet. It’s a bargain, then; and here we are at Bonn.