I do not know how Homburg has developed since then. I see it before me like this: a long, wide street leading from the railway to infinity, interrupted on the right hand by a square where the Kursaal stands; along the street the houses either are hotels,—the usual Englischer Hof, Russischer Hof, or other Hof,—or bear a placard reading _Appartements meublés_. When you get beyond the Kursaal the hotels diminish, the street leading to infinity takes on the character of a small city, and into it open the little streets and alleys that pertain to the capital of the reigning Landgrave of Hesse-Homburg. At that time the last of the landgraves was seated on this throne; for two years later not only did his line die out with him, so that the landgraviate fell to Hesse-Darmstadt, but by the terms of the peace of September 3, 1886, it was incorporated into the kingdom of Prussia as a part of the province of Hesse. Hesse-Homburg patriotism, if there was any, must have been retrimmed in quick succession into a Darmstadt patriotism, a Nassau patriotism, a Prussian and an Imperial German patriotism. Where the great street broke off at Kurhaus Square, a side street turned to the right, running opposite the Kursaal to the park. Here was the foremost hotel of the place, Hotel Bellevue, and around the corner, where the park was already beginning, stood the large three-story Weckerlin house, on the ground floor of which I had many a joyous hour—of this more anon. When we arrived we knew nobody, but acquaintances are readily formed in watering-places. Thus it came to pass that on the very first evening, at our landlord’s bank, where my mother was having money changed (the capital for the indubitable winning of those millions), we fell in with an old gentleman whom Herr Wormser introduced to us as “Banker Königswarter from Paris.” Then when we came to the music the next afternoon Herr von Königswarter joined us, and introduced to us several other guests of the spa, both gentlemen and ladies. Thus we became acquainted with a Countess Vitztum who lived in Paris, Baron Alphonse Rothschild from Naples, and several others whom I do not now remember.