regarded a large proportion of the crowd which made it look so gay, was--not to put too fine a point upon it--a sink of more unmitigated blackguardism than could easily be found concentrated within so small a compass on any other spot of the earth. A large number of the persons who now congregate in this beautiful valley look, to tell the truth, somewhat vulgar. Vulgar? As if the flaunting crowds which seemed to insult the magnificent forests, the crystal streams and the smiling lawns with their finery were not saturated with a vulgarity of the most quintessential intensity! Yes, but that only showed itself to the moral sense of those who could look a little below the surface, whereas the vulgarity that may be noted sunning itself in the trim gardens and sprawling on the satin sofas which are the legacy of the departed wickedness is of the sort that shows itself upon the surface. In a word, moral Baden looks a little _dowdy_, and _that_ wicked Baden never looked. [Illustration: IN FRONT OF THE KURSAAL AT BADEN.] The general determination at Baden when the terrible decree which put an end to its career of wealth and wickedness came upon it like a thunder-bolt was of the kind expressed by the more forcible than elegant phrase, "Never say die!" The little town was determined to have a struggle for its existence. It still had its mineral waters, so highly valued by the Romans. The Romans, it may be remarked _en passant_, seem to have discovered and profited by every mineral spring in Europe. Hardly one of the more important springs can be named which cannot be shown, either by direct historic testimony or by the still existing remains of baths and the like, to have been known to the universal conquerors. Well, Baden still had its waters, good for all the ills to which flesh is heir--_capiti fluit utilis, utilis alveo_. It still had its magnificent forests--pine and oak and beech in most lovely juxtaposition and contrast. It had the interesting and charmingly picturesque ruins of its ancient castle on the forest-covered hill above the town, perched on one mighty mass of porphyry, and surrounded by other ranges of the same rock, thrown into such fantastic forms that they seem to assume the appearance of rival castellated ruins built on Nature's own colossal plan, and such a world of strange forms of turrets and spires and isolated towers and huge donjons that the Devil has "pulpits" and "bridges" and "chambers" there, as is well known to all tourists to be his wont in similar places. It had its other mediæval baronial residences situated in the depths of the forest at pleasant distances for either driving or walking. It had its delicious parks and gardens, beginning from the very door of the "Conversations-Haus," with brilliantly-lighted avenues, gay with shops and gas-lamps, and gradually wandering away into umbrageous solitudes and hillside paths lit by the moon alone--so gradually that she who had accepted an arm for a stroll