Who would not be ill, I wonder? Who would not discover that Hampshire was too high and Essex too low, Devon too close and Cumberland too bracing? Who would not give up his village M.D., and all his array of bottles, with their long white cravats, for a ramble to the Rhine, where luxurious living, belles, and balls abounded, and where _soit dit en passant_, the _rouge et noir_ table afforded the easy resource of supplying all such pleasures, so that you might grow robust and rich at once, and while imbibing iron into your blood, lay up a stock of gold with your banker? Hence the connection between Spas and gambling; hence the fashionable flocking to those healthful spots by thousands who never felt illness; hence the unblushing avowal of having been a month at Baden by those who would flinch at acknowledging an hour in a ‘hell’; and hence, more important than all, at least to one individual concerned, the source of that real alchemy by which a grand-duke, like Macheath, can ‘Turn all his lead to gold.’ Well may he exclaim, with the gallant captain-- ‘Fill every glass!’ Were the liquor champagne or tokay, it could not be a hundredth part as profitable; and the whole thing presents a picture of ‘hocussing’ on the grandest scale ever adopted. The fifteen glasses of abomination demand a walk of half an hour, or a sojourn in the Cursaal. The Cursaal is a hell! there is no need to mince it. The taste for play is easily imbibed--what bad taste is not?--and thus, while you are drawing the pump, the grand-duke is diving into your pocket. Here, then--I shall not add a word--is the true state of the Spas of Germany. As I believe it is customary to distinguish all writers on these ‘fountains of health’ by some mark of princely favour proportionate to their services of praise, I beg to add, if the Gross Herzog von Hesse-Homburg deems the present a suitable instance for notice, that Arthur O’Leary will receive such evidence of grand-ducal approbation with a most grateful spirit, and acknowledge the same in some future volume of his ‘Loiterings,’ only requesting to mention that when Theodore Hook--poor fellow!--was dining once with a London alderman remarkable for the display and the tedium of his dinners, he felt himself at the end of an hour and a half’s vigorous performance only in the middle of the entertainment; upon which he laid down his knife, and in a whisper uttered: ‘_Eating_ more is out of the question; so I ‘ll take the rest out in money.’ CHAPTER XXIII. THE TRAVELLING PARTY