Thence they went to Basle, lodging at the inn of the Three Kings, and dining by a window that looked across the Rhine to smiling plains; thence past miles of tobacco fields to Strasbourg; thence across the Rhine and to Rastadt; thence by way of Carlsruhe and Speyer to Mannheim, whose straight streets, crossing at right angles, reminded Dick of Philadelphia. Over a flat country where there were few houses but palaces and peasants' cottages,--for in most small German states the gentry lived in the capitals and the merchant class in towns,--they went by carriage to the ecclesiastical capital, Mayence, which swarmed with priests, many of them rich and gay-looking, and not a few openly tipsy with Rhenish wine. From there Lord George and his secretary proceeded to Frankfort, notable for its stately houses covered with red stucco, its spacious streets, its well-dressed and well-mannered people, its multitude of Jews. From the free imperial city they drove to Marburg, in the landgraviate of Hesse-Cassel, a hilly, well-wooded country, with many fertile valleys and fields. Its landgrave, Frederick II., was one of the richest and most powerful of all the German princes, and was then in close relations with England, which fact gave him a mild interest in Lord George's eyes; but there was to that fact a circumstance with a different interest for Dick Wetheral,--it was this Landgrave that sold his troops to England, and thousands of them were even now in America fighting against Dick's countrymen. Pushing on from Marburg as rapidly as the bad roads and the stolid, smoking German postilion would let them go, the young gentlemen entered Cassel, then no longer a walled city, on a pleasant autumn evening, little foreseeing, as they drove in from the southwest and set foot before the hotel in the round platz near the Landgrave's palace, that in this capital a very remarkable drama was about to open in the life of Dick Wetheral. The next morning Dick stayed in the hotel to write Lord George's journal up to date, while his lordship went out to visit the English resident. Before noon Lord George returned. "Lay aside your pen, my dear fellow," he said to Dick. "We are to dine at the palace with their highnesses, the Landgrave and Landgravine. Make haste, you've barely time to change your clothes." "But I am merely a secretary," objected Dick, who had no desire to enjoy the hospitality of the Landgrave of Hesse-Cassel. "So much the more reason why you should see the Landgrave's court, to write my description of it. Besides, no one will know you are my secretary as well as my friend." "But no one is permitted to appear at German courts who isn't noble."