In the early summer of 1911 my wife and I joined our dear friends, the Dutch novelist Maarten Maartens and his daughter, in a motor-trip through parts of the Rhine Province, and in particular the romantic and volcanic districts of the Eiffel. Maarten Maartens (who died in Holland so lately as the 3rd of August, 1915) was the most delightful travelling companion, and the perfection of his linguistic gifts--for he spoke English, French, Italian and German in each case like a native--made the face of Europe one wide home to him. Our tour was nearly over; we had descended the Moselle, and had paused where the Benedictine Abbey of Laach, on the edge of its serene and wood-encircled crater-lake offers hospitality to the stranger; and then we went down to the Rhine and reached Königswinter late one afternoon. At Königswinter, as travellers know, there is an hotel which Germans brag of as “the best in the world.” It is, in fact, or was then, very large, sumptuously furnished, nobly situated on the bastion of the Rhine, looking right over to Drachenfels. The service was rapid and noiseless, the cooking as good as a Teuton kitchen can produce. It had the air of highly-organised prosperity, of a machine exactly suited to harmonise with wealth. To call it “the best hotel in the world” is to show a false conception of excellence as applied to hotels, but it presented everything that German luxury could demand. We were given a row of excellent rooms on the first floor, with long windows opening on to a terrace which roofed the great restaurant, and whence there was a noble prospect. We went to bed early, and soon the whole vast establishment seemed wrapped in velvet silence. Not a sound broke in the dark warm summer night, not even a whisper from the river. Suddenly an amazing, an unintelligible riot woke the row of us from slumber. The electric light, switched hurriedly on, revealed that the hour was three. In front of us, apparently on our terrace, a turmoil was proceeding of a character to wake the dead. Explosions of glass, what seemed the deeper note of crockery, strange shrieks of metal, bassoon-like and drum-like noises, a deafening roar. Turning off the light, with face pressed to the window, there were dimly to be distinguished phantom-objects descending from above our heads, a shower of vague orbs and bosses, splinters of light, a chaos of the indescribable. Presently the hubbub ceased, deep silence reigned again, and after whispered and bewildered confabulation from door to door, we fell again to dreamless sleep.