We passed through the suburbs of the town, and then through the Ghetto. You never can imagine how much colour is in dirt till you see the Jews' quarter of Frankfort--how much poetry, and also, how much perfume! Joubert, who could not speak a word of the Hogs' language--as he was pleased to style the language of Germany--drove on, piercing the narrow streets to the heart of the town, and in the Kaisserstrasse he drew up. The General inquired the way of a policeman, and in five minutes or less we were before the doors of the Hôtel des Hollandaise. CHAPTER II VON LICHTENBERG The Hôtel des Hollandaise was situated, I believe, in the Wilhelmstrasse, an old-fashioned inn with a courtyard. It has long vanished, giving place to a more modern building. Nowadays, when the Continent is inundated with travellers, when you are received at a great hotel with about as much consideration as a pauper is received at a workhouse, it is hard to imagine the old conditions of travel. Weigand, the proprietor of the Hôtel des Hollandaise, received us in person, backed by half a dozen waiters, all happy and smiling. They had the art of seeming to have known us for years; the luggage was removed as tenderly as though it were packed with Sèvres, and, led by the host, we were conducted to our rooms, a suite on the first floor. When Marie Antoinette came to France, at the first halting-place beyond the frontier she slept in a room whose tapestry represented the Massacre of the Innocents. Our sitting-room in the Hôtel des Hollandaise, a large room, had upon its walls the Siege of Troy, not in tapestry, but wall-paper. On this day, when the seeds of my future life were sown, it was a coincidence, strange enough, this villainous wall-decoration, with its tale of war, ruin, and love. Whilst my father was writing letters, I, active and inquisitive as a terrier, explored the suite, examined the town from the balcony of the sitting-room, and, finding the prospect unexciting, proceeded to the examination of the hotel. A balcony surrounded the large central courtyard, where people were seated at tables, some smoking, some drinking beer from tall mugs with lids to them. Waiters passed to and fro; it was delightful to watch, delightful to speculate and weave romances about the unromantical drinkers--Jews, travellers, and traders; foreign to my eyes as the denizens of a bazaar in Samarcand. Now casting my eyes up, and led by the spirit that makes children see what is not intended for them, I saw, at a door in the gallery opposite to me, Joubert, who had just been superintending the stabling of the horses. He was coming on to the gallery from the staircase. A fat, ugly, German maidservant was passing him, and he--just as another person would say "Good-day!"--slipped his arm round her waist and kissed her, made a grimace, and passed on round the gallery towards me.