After this exordium I resume where I left off. I was in great disgust at Wiesbaden the first days of my abode there, but I soon fell into the way of life, and made up my mind to it more easily and more completely than I ever expected to do. This was, in fact, rendered more easy by the growing disinclination which is creeping over me for society, and the almost dread and dislike I feel more and more every day for conversation--in fact, I feel utterly incompetent to sustain a part in conversation, and a sense of this inability, and a conviction that it must be as apparent to others as it is to myself, weighs me down, destroys my animal spirits, and turns into reality that which might possibly at first be in great measure the result of a morbid fancy. Be it, however, caused by the one or the other, it is now with me a disease, and one which must and will in the end incapacitate me for social intercourse.[100] One great cause is undoubtedly my deafness, which prevents my hearing what passes around me, makes me slow of apprehension, and is productive of both melancholy and embarrassment. However, to return to my history. [Sidenote: EMS AND ANTWERP.] I remained at Wiesbaden till the latter end of July, making no acquaintance, and doing nothing but read such books as I got from Frankfort, going nowhere. The only excursion that I made was to the Château de Herrenheim, near Worms, where I found the Duchesse Dalberg, Lady Leveson, the Mariscalchis, and the D'Arcos. A comfortable house in a wretched country. I went to see Worms, a decayed old town, full of historical recollections, and I gazed at the great tree under which, according to tradition, Luther took shelter on his way to the Diet. From Wiesbaden I went to Ems for two nights, which was as full as Wiesbaden was empty. There I saw the old Elector of Hesse gambling on a great scale, and was presented to the Princess of Orange,[101] an intelligent woman. At Ems I met Francis and my sister,[102] who entered the place like pilgrims rather than like millionary aristocrats. They came over the mountains from Coblentz, she mounted on a sorry jade of a horse, the two girls on donkeys, Francis stoutly walking by their side, and all dressed in rough and inelegant habiliments, suited to work and not to show. From Ems I came on to Malines, when I diverged to Antwerp, and spent half a day there looking at the pictures, and was well repaid. The fine works of Rubens in the Cathedral are in such a bad light that it is difficult to see them satisfactorily, but the pictures in the Museum are very grand; crossed the water in one of the old boats, eight hours, and arrived in town on Tuesday morning, July 22.