At every village, however, Coucou Peter remembered that he had still three francs left of the thirty given him by Dame Thérèse, and made a visit to the nearest wine-shop. Everywhere he fell in with acquaintances, and found a pretext for offering or accepting a bottle. But it was in vain that he begged his master to enter the public-houses; for Mathéus, seeing that in this manner they could never get to the end of their destination, remained on horseback at the door, in the midst of a circle of peasants who collected to look at him. The most he would do was to accept a glass through the window, in token of good-fellowship with the numerous friends of his disciple. At length, towards evening, they came in sight of the ancient city of Strasbourg. Great animation had already exhibited itself on their passage; every moment they met carriages, waggoners leading their horses by the bridle, customs officers, armed with their sharp iron probe, pricking packages, and diligences filled with conscripts. A crowd of lights appeared in the distance, and repeated themselves in the dark stream of the Ile. But when they had made their way across the bridge, and through the crowded and noisy corps de garde, and the winding outworks; when they had penetrated into the city, with its old houses, their fronts falling into decay, their thousand windows gleaming in the light of the hanging lamps; its silk-mercers and sweetstuff-shops and library illuminated as if by magic-lanterns; street-doors blocked up with merchandise, tortuous alleys hiding away in the darkness; when all these objects met their view, what tenderly affecting thoughts returned to the good Doctor’s memory! Here he had spent the happiest years of his youth; here was the Heron beerhouse where every evening, on leaving the medical lecture-room, he came to smoke his pipe and take a pint of beer in company with Ludwig, Conrad, Bastien, and many other joyous comrades. There it was that the seignor perorated gravely in the midst of his subject Burchen; that the pretty waitresses moved about them, laughing with one, replying with a wink to another, and answering the orders of their mistress with, “Coming directly, madame.” Ah, happy days, how far off now! What has become of you, Conrad, Wilhelm, Ludwig, brave drinkers that you were?—what has become of you these forty years? And you, Gretchen, Rosa, Charlotte, what has become of you?—you, so fresh, so graceful, so active, who used to worry little Frantz, sitting always so grave at the corner of the table, smoking calmly and sipping his beer, with his eyes raised to the ceiling, dreaming already, perhaps, of his sublime anthropo-zoological discoveries? What has become of you, youth, grace, beauty, life without care, and with unbounded hope? Ah, you are far, far off! And you, poor Mathéus! have grown old; your locks are grey, you have nothing left but your system to sustain you.