I left Würzburg at four o'clock and took the Mannheim Road. I entered the Grand-duchy of Baden; I found a village in a merry mood; a drunkard gave me his hand, shouting: "Long live the Emperor!" Everything that has happened since the fall of Napoleon is null and void in Germany. The men who rose to snatch their national independence from Bonaparte's ambition dream only of him, so greatly did he stir the imagination of the nations, from the Bedouins in their tents to the Teutons in their huts. As I went towards France, the children became noisier in the hamlets, the postillions drove faster, life sprang up once more. [Sidenote: The Swallow.] At Bischoffsheim, where I dined, a fair onlooker appeared at my state banquet: a swallow, a real Procne, with a reddish breast, came to perch at my open window, on the iron bar from which swung the sign of the Golden Sun; then it warbled most sweetly, looking at me as though it knew me and without showing the least alarm. I have never complained of being awakened by the daughter of Pandion; I have never, like Anacreon, called her a "chatterer;" I have always, on the contrary, hailed her return with the song of the children of the isle of Rhodes: "She comes, the swallow comes, bringing good seasons and a joyful time! Open the window, do not despise the swallow[21]!" "François," said my fellow-guest at Bischoffsheim, "my great-great-grandmother used to live at Combourg, under the rafters of the roof of your turret; you used to keep her company every year, in autumn, in the reeds in the pond, when you went dreaming, of an evening, with your sylph. She landed on your native rock, on the very day when you embarked for America, and she followed your sail for some time. My grandmother built her nest in Charlotte's window; eight years after, she arrived at Jaffa with you: you have mentioned this in your _Itinéraire?_[22] My mother, while twittering to the dawn, fell one day into your room at the Foreign Office[23]; you opened the window for her. My mother has had many children: I who am speaking to you am of her last nest; I have met you before on the old Tivoli Road in the Roman Campagna: do you remember? My feathers were so black and so glossy! You looked at me sadly. Would you like us to fly away together?"