Civilization has made progress in Germany since my journey to Berlin: the beds are now almost long enough for a man of ordinary stature; but the top sheet is still sewn to the blanket and the bottom sheet, which is too narrow, ends by twisting and curling up in such a way as to make you very uncomfortable; and, since I am in the country of Auguste Lafontaine[542], I will imitate his genius: I want to inform the latest posterity of what existed in my time in the room of my inn at Waldmünchen. Know then, grand-nephews, that that room was like an Italian room, with bare, white-washed walls, without any wood-work or hangings, a wide coloured band or skirting at the bottom, a ceiling with a circle of three fillets, a cornice painted with blue roses with a garland of chocolate-coloured laurel-leaves and, above the cornice, on the wall, foliage painted in red on an American-green ground. Here and there, little French and English engravings, in frames. Two windows with white cotton curtains. Between the windows, a looking-glass. In the middle of the room, a table for at least twelve people, covered with an oil-cloth with a raised ground, stamped with roses and different flowers. Six chairs upholstered in red tartan. A chest of drawers, three bedsteads round the room; in a corner, near the door, a stove in black glazed earthen-ware, of which the sides show the Bavarian arms in relief; it is topped with a receiver shaped like a Gothic crown. The door is furnished with a complicated iron mechanism capable of closing the gates of a gaol and baffling the picklocks of thieves or lovers. I describe, for the benefit of travellers, the excellent room in which I am writing this inventory, which competes with the Miser's[543]; I recommend it to future Legitimists who may be stopped by the red-headed wild-goat of Haselbach. This page of my Memoirs will give pleasure to the modern literary school. [Sidenote: My room at the Inn.] After counting, by the light of the night-lamp, the astragals of the ceiling and looking at the engravings of the _Young Milanese_, the _Beautiful Greeks_, the _Young Frenchwoman_, the _Young Russian_, the late King of Bavaria[544], the late Queen of Bavaria[545], who is like a lady whom I know and whose name I cannot possibly remember, I snatched a few minutes' sleep. I rose from bed at 7 o'clock on the 22nd. A bath took away the rest of my fatigue and I was interested only in my village, like Captain Cook discovering an islet in the Pacific Ocean. Waldmünchen is built on the slope of a hill; it is not unlike a dilapidated village in the Papal States: a few house-fronts painted in fresco, an archway at either end of the main street, no ostensible shops, a dry well in the square, a frightful pavement of large flags mixed with small pebbles, of the kind which one no longer sees except in "the neighbourhood of Quimper-Corentin."