In less than an hour, thanks to Santonio's quickening of the pulses of existence at our first landing-place, we were safe in a hackney-coach (very unlike any other conveyance), if indeed it could be called "safe" to be so bestowed, as I was continually precipitated against Santonio. His violin-case had never left his hand since we quitted the vessel,--and this was just as well, for it might have suffered from the jolting. Its master was all kindness now. "Cheer up," said he; "do not let your idea of German life begin here. You will soon find plenty to amuse you." He rubbed the reeking fog from one glass with his handkerchief forthwith, and I, peeping out, saw something of houses drawing near. They were dim and tall and dark, as if they had never fronted daylight. It took us quite half an hour to reach the village, notwithstanding, for our pace was laboriously tardy; and again and again I wished I had stayed with Santonio at the little inn where we took the coach, and to which he was himself to return to sleep, having bespoken a bed there; for I felt that day would have done everything for me in manning and spiriting me, and that there was too much mystery in my transition state already to bear the surcharging mystery of night with thought undaunted. Coming into that first street, I believed we should stop every instant, for the faint few lamps, strung here and there, gave me a notion of gabled windows and gray-black arches, nothing more definite than any dream; so much the better. Still we stopped not anywhere in that region, nor even when, having passed the market-place with its little colonnade, we turned, or were shaken, into a quiet square. It came upon me like a nook of panorama; but I heard the splash of falling water before I beheld, starting from the mist, its shape, as it poured into a basin of shadowy stone beneath a skeleton tree, whose lowest sprays I could have touched as we drove near the fountain, so close we came. And then I saw before me a church, and could discern the stately steps and portico, even the crosses on the graves, which bade me remember that they died also in Germany. No organ echoes pealed, or choral song resounded, no chime struck; but my heart beat all these tunes, and for the first time I associated the feeling of religion with any earth-built shrine. It was in a street beyond the square, and overlooked by the tower of the church itself, that at length we stopped indeed, and that I found myself bewildered at once by darkness and expectation, standing upon the pavement before a foreign doorway, enough for any picture of the brain. "Now," said my escort, "I will take you upstairs first,--for you would never find your way,--and then return and see after all these things. The man won't run away with them, I believe,--he is too ugly to be anything but honest. I hope you do not expect a footman to open the door?" "I dislike footmen, but there is no knocker. Please show me the bell, Mr. Santonio."