“_Kein Wagen_,” he murmurs with an air of finality; and in spite of my misgivings they all fall upon my various possessions and put them into the oldest and most decrepit of the droschkies--the only one left--with a horse to correspond, and a driver who strikes the last note in deplorable shabbiness and stupidity. No one who has not travelled in German trains fed with German coal can appreciate the sheer discomfort and misery caused by this wretched fuel, which vomits forth clouds of thick black smoke, laden with solid, sooty particles, having a fatal affinity for the features of the passengers. I have assimilated to myself a certain amount of this invariable accompaniment of Continental travel, and am uncomfortably conscious of the fact. Neither is it thus--in a wretched droschky, with my luggage piled drunkenly around me at various untidy, ill-fitting angles--that I had dreamed of entering the precincts of royalty. Later on I grew callous in this respect and perceived that I had been unduly sensitive over a small matter; but my feelings on this important occasion were, it must be admitted, acutely miserable. One knows instinctively that a first impression counts for a good deal. Up the long Louisen-strasse and past the Kurhaus we rattle over the cobble-stones of past ages with which so many German towns are paved, and down a side-street I catch a glimpse of a smart-looking brougham with a footman sitting beside the coachman on the box, driving quickly in the direction from which we have come. I am convinced that it is the carriage meant for me, and would like to go back again to the station; but all attempts to convey my meaning to the egregious person whose back obscures my view are unavailing. He shrugs his shoulders, whips up his horse, utters guttural incomprehensible ejaculations, and points to a large old building in front of us before whose open gates a sentry is pacing. The sentry looks surprised and hesitates, the animal in the shafts crawls through the gateway and comes to a sudden halt in the midst of a big paved courtyard, surrounded by open windows and containing in one angle a pleasant flower-garden of green turf and climbing geraniums. We are in the Royal Homburg Schloss. A beautiful sun-bathed silence prevails everywhere. Through a gateway opposite, leading into a second courtyard, a fountain can be heard plashing gently with occasional intermittent hesitations and precipitations, while a pigeon croons slumberously at intervals on the roof. Otherwise it seems an absolutely deserted spot. There is nothing to indicate before which of the various doors, which stand half open to the light and air, I ought to be set down.