Coming away from the insidious fumes of the wine into the hot air, and leaving the dark cellars for the glaring broad daylight, made us all feel a little lightheaded. I noticed that the Archduke had to be gently and with due discretion aided up the steps. He dropped into the first available bench and said, solemnly and with conviction: "To see this wine makes one want to taste it; to taste it makes one want to drink it; to drink it makes one want to dream." I hope that you appreciate this profound saying; it ought not to be lost to posterity. We left him, thinking he would prefer the society of his adjutant to ours. I knew that I preferred mine to any one else's, and went to my room, mounting its winding staircase, which I thought wound more than was necessary. Taking guests into wine-cellars is the great joke here, and it never fails. Every one was in exuberant spirits at dinner. I wish I could remember half of the clever things that were said. The corn came on amid screams of delight. Our hostess ate thirteen ears, which, if reduced to kernels, would have made about one ordinary ear, there was so much cob and so little corn. The Princess enjoyed them hugely. Coffee was served on the terrace. Later we had music in the hall, and before the departure of the Archduke there was a fine display of fireworks sent off from the terrace, which must have looked splendid from a distance. SOMMERBERG, _August, 1874._ DEAR M.,--Prince Emil Wittgenstein and his wife have a pretty villa at Walhuf, directly on the Rhine, and they invited Helen and me to dine and spend the night there. Prince Wittgenstein promised to show us some wonderful manifestations from spiritland. Helen is not a believer, neither am I, but the Prince thinks I am, and, as Helen could not leave her guests, I went alone. The Prince wrote that he had induced, with great difficulty (and probably with a great deal of expense), the much-talked-of Miss Cook to come with her sister to pay them a visit at their villa. Miss Cook is the medium through whom the Empress Josephine and Katie King (a lady unknown to the world, except as being the daughter of a certain old sea-captain, called John King, who roamed the seas a hundred years ago and pirated) manifest themselves. I was delighted to have this chance of seeing Miss Cook, because I had read in the English papers that she had lately been shown up as a gigantic fraud. At one of her séances in London, just as she was in the act of materializing in conjunction with the Empress Josephine, a gentleman, disregarding all rules of etiquette, sprang from the audience and seized her in his arms; but instead of melting, as a proper spirit would have done, the incensed Empress screamed and scratched and tore herself away, actually leaving bits of her raiment in his hands. This rude gentleman swears that the imperial nails seemed wholly of earthly texture, and that the scratches were as thorough and lasted as well as if made by any common mortal.