It was hot in England in that September, but it was hotter at Baden. With the earliest dawn came thick vapours rolling down from the Black Forest, encompassing the little town with a white and misty shroud, which invariably presaged a sultry day, and invariably kept its promise. All day long the big red-faced sun glared down upon the denizens of the pleasantest corner of Vanity Fair; glared in the early morning upon the water-drinkers sipping the nauseous fluid in the thick and heavy glass tumblers, and tendering their kreutzers to the attendant maidens at the Brunnen; glared upon them as they took the prescribed constitutional walk, and returned to the hotel to breakfast; glared upon the fevered gamblers, who, with last night's excitement only half slept off, with bleared eyes and shaking hands and parched throats, took their places round the gaming-table as the clock struck noon, and eyed the stolid-faced croupiers as intently as though the chances of the game were to be gleamed from a perusal of their fishy eyes or pursed mouths. The revellers who were starting off for picnics to the Black Forest, or excursions to the Favourite or Eberstein-Schloss, glanced up with terror at the scorching red ball in the sky, and bade courteous Mr. Rheinboldt, the landlord of the Badischer Hof, to see that plenty of ice was packed with the sparkling Moselle, and to let Karl and Fritz take care that an unlimited supply of umbrellas was placed in the carriage. The Englishmen, whom M. Benazet, the proprietor of the gaming-tables, grateful for their patronage, had provided with shooting, or who had received invitations to the _triebjagd_ of some neighbouring landowner, looked with comic wonder, not unmixed with horror, at the green jerkins, fantastic game-bags, couteaux de chasse or hunting-knives (worn in the belt), and general appearance of their foreign friends; and then when lunch-time arrived, and they saw each German eating his own sausage and drinking from his own particular flask, which he never dreamed of passing, they recollected with dismay the luncheons at similar parties in England, the snowy cloth laid under the shade of the hedge, the luscious game-pie, the cooling claret-cup, the glancing eyes and natty ankles of those who had accompanied the luncheon. Hot! It was no word for it. It was blazing, tearing, drying, baking, scorching heat, and it was hotter at Baden than anywhere else.