was built for his abode, and here the legend is prudently silent.  Although one is not bound to believe all he hears; we are all charmed with the images which such tales create, especially when, as in this case, they are aided by visible and tangible objects in the shape of good stone walls.  As we trotted along under the brow of the mountain that upholds the ruins of the castle of Charlemagne’s nephew, my eye rested musingly on the silent pile of the convent.  “That convent,” I called out to the postilion, “is still inhabited?” “Ja, mein Herr, es ist ein gasthaus.”  An inn!—­the thing was soon explained.  The convent, a community of Benedictines, had been suppressed some fifteen or twenty years, and the buildings had been converted into one of your sentimental taverns.  With the closest scrutiny I could not detect a soul near the spot, for junketing in a ruin is my special aversion.  A hamlet stood on the bank at no great distance above the island; the postilion grinned when I asked if it would be possible to get horses to this place in the morning, for it saved him a trot all the way to Oberwinter.  He promised to send word in the course of the night to the relay above, and the whole affair was arranged in live minutes.  The carriage was housed and left under the care of Francois on the main land, a night sack thrown into a skiff, and in ten minutes we were afloat on the Rhine.  Our little bark whirled about in the eddies, and soon touched the upper point of the island.

We found convent, gasthaus, and sentiment, without any pre-occupants.  There was not a soul on the island, but the innkeeper, his wife, a child, a cook, a crone who did all sorts of work, and three Prussian soldiers, who were billeted on the house, part of a detachment that we had seen scattered along the road, all the way from Bonn.  I do not know which were the most gladdened by the meeting, ourselves or the good people of the place; we at finding anything like retirement in Europe, and they at seeing anything like guests.  The man regretted that we had come so late, for a large party had just left him; and we felicitated ourselves that we had not come any sooner, for precisely the same reason.  As soon as he comprehended our tastes, he very frankly admitted that every room in the convent was empty.  “There is no one, but these, on the island.  Not a living being, herr graf” for these people have made a count of me, whether or not.  Here then were near two hundred acres, environed by the Rhine, prettily disposed in wood and meadow, absolutely at our mercy.  You can readily imagine, with what avidity a party of young Parisiennes profited by their liberty, while I proceeded forthwith to inspect the ladder, and then to inspect the cloisters.  Sooth to say, sentiment had a good deal to do with two of the courses of a dinner at Nonnenswerth, for so is the island called.  The buildings were spacious, and far from mean; and it was a pleasant thing to promenade in cloisters that had so lately been trodden by holy nuns, and see your dinner preparing in a convent kitchen.  I could do no less than open a bottle of “Liebfraumilch” in such a place, but it proved to be a near neighbour to bonny-clabber.