He drives up to the handsome old Kurhaus, nestling close beneath heather-clad rocks, upon its lawn shaded with huge horse-chestnuts, and set round with dahlias, and geraniums, and delicate tinted German stocks, which fill the air with fragrance; a place made only for young lovers:—­certainly not for those black, petticoated worthies, each with that sham of a sham, the modern tonsure, pared down to a poor florin’s breadth among their bushy, well-oiled curls, who sit at little tables, passing the lazy day “a muguetter les bourgeoises” of Sarrebruck and Treves, and sipping the fragrant Josephshofer—­perhaps at the good bourgeois’ expense.

Past them Stangrave slips angrily; for that “development of humanity” can find no favour in his eyes; being not human at all, but professedly superhuman, and therefore, practically, sometimes inhuman.

He hurries into the public room; seizes on the visitor’s book.

The names are there, in their own handwriting:  but where are they?

Waiters are seized and questioned.  The English ladies came back last night, and are gone this afternoon.

“Where are they gone?”

Nobody recollects:  not even the man from whom they hired the carriage.  But they are not gone far.  Their servants and their luggage are still here.  Perhaps the Herr Ober-Badmeister, Lieutenant D——­ will know.  “Oh, it will not trouble him.  An English gentleman?  Der Herr Lieutenant will be only too happy;” and in ten minutes der Herr Lieutenant appears, really only too happy; and Stangrave finds himself at once in the company of a soldier and a gentleman.  Had their acquaintance been a longer one, he would have recognised likewise the man of taste and of piety.

“I can well appreciate, sir,” says he, in return to Stangrave’s anxious inquiries, “your impatience to rejoin your lovely countrywomen, who have been for the last three weeks the wonder and admiration of our little paradise; and whose four days’ absence was regarded, believe me, as a public calamity.”

“I can well believe it; but they are not countrywomen of mine.  The one lady is an Englishwoman; the other—­I believe—­an Italian.”

“And der Herr?”

“An American.”

“Ah!  A still greater pleasure, sir.  I trust that you will carry back across the Atlantic a good report of a spot all but unknown, I fear, to your compatriots.  You will meet one, I think, on the return of the ladies.”

“A compatriot?”

“Yes.  A gentleman who arrived here this morning, and who seemed, from his conversation with them, to belong to your noble fatherland.  He went out driving with them this afternoon, whither I unfortunately know not.  Ah! good Saint Nicholas!—­For though I am a Lutheran, I must invoke him now—­Look out yonder!”

Stangrave looked, and joined in the general laugh of lieutenant, waiters, priests, and bourgeoises.

For under the chestnuts strutted, like him in Struwelpeter, as though he were a very king of Ashantee, Sabina’s black boy, who had taken to himself a scarlet umbrella, and a great cigar; while after him came, also like them in Struwelpeter, Caspar, bretzel in hand, and Ludwig with his hoop, and all the naughty boys of Bertrich town, hooting and singing in chorus, after the fashion of German children.