When the Kickleburys were gone, that merry little Rougetnoirbourg did not seem the same place to me, somehow. The sun shone still, but the wind came down cold from the purple hills; the band played, but their tunes were stale; the promenaders paced the alleys, but I knew all their faces: as I looked out of my windows in the Tissisch house upon the great blank casements lately occupied by the Kickleburys, and remembered what a pretty face I had seen looking thence but a few days back, I cared not to look any longer; and though Mrs. Milliken did invite me to tea, and talked fine arts and poetry over the meal, both the beverage and the conversation seemed very weak and insipid to me, and I fell asleep once in my chair opposite that highly cultivated being. "Let us go back, Lankin," said I to the Serjeant, and he was nothing loth; for most of the other serjeants, barristers, and Queen's counsel were turning homewards, by this time, the period of term time summoning them all to the Temple. So we went straight one day to Biberich on the Rhine, and found the little town full of Britons, all trooping home like ourselves. Everybody comes, and everybody goes away again, at about the same time. The Rhine innkeepers say that their customers cease with a single day almost:--that in three days they shall have ninety, eighty, a hundred guests; on the fourth, ten or eight. We do as our neighbors do. Though we don't speak to each other much when we are out a-pleasuring, we take our holiday in common, and go back to our work in gangs. Little Biberich was so full, that Lankin and I could not get rooms at the large inns frequented by other persons of fashion, and could only procure a room between us, "at the German House, where you find English comfort," says the advertisement, "with German prices." But oh, the English comfort of those beds! How did Lankin manage in his, with his great long legs? How did I toss and tumble in mine; which, small as it was, I was not destined to enjoy alone, but to pass the night in company with anthropophagous wretched reptiles, who took their horrid meal off an English Christian! I thought the morning would never come; and when the tardy dawn at length arrived, and as I was in my first sleep, dreaming of Miss Fanny, behold I was wakened up by the Serjeant, already dressed and shaven, and who said, "Rise, Titmarsh, the steamer will be here in three-quarters of an hour." And the modest gentleman retired, and left me to dress. The next morning we had passed by the rocks and towers, the old familiar landscapes, the gleaming towns by the riverside, and the green vineyards combed along the hills, and when I woke up, it was at a great hotel at Cologne, and it was not sunrise yet.