ILLUSTRATIONS

  Caesar’s penny. 
  The THRONED corpse. 
  The skeleton in armor. 
  Brussels. 
  Father Joliet. 
  The catechism. 
  Frau Kranich. 
  “To my arms.” 
  The future of FFARINA. 
  Hohenfels’ failure. 
  Reading the contract. 
  Interrupted repose. 
  Coals vs.  Coats
  the jester at the feast.
  St. GUDOLE, Brussels. 
  Square of the hotel de Ville, Brussels. 
  Divers diversions. 
  The mimic hunt. 
  Homeward bound. 
  Charles and Josephine. 
  Argus and Ulysses. 
  “Hand it over to art.” 
  Near the source of the Tiber. 
  Caprese. 
  Lake Thrasimene. 
  The Tiber near perugia. 
  Todi. 
  Church and convent of saint Francis, at Assisi.

THE NEW HYPERION.

From Paris to Marly by way of the Rhine.

XIX.—­TYING UP THE CLEWS.

[Illustration:  Caesar’s penny.]

In leaving Cologne for Aix-la-Chapelle you turn your back to the river—­a particular which suited my mood well enough.  The railway bore us away from the Rhine-shore at an abrupt angle, and in my notion the noble Germanic goddess or image seemed at this point to recede with grand theatric strides, like a divinity of the stage backing away from her admirers over the billowy whirlpool of her own skirts.  As I dreamed we penetrated the tunnel of Koenigsdorf, which is fifteen hundred yards long, and which seemed to me sufficiently protracted to contain the slumber of Barbarossa.  The thought gave me a useful hint, and I fell into a light sleep, while Charles and Hohenfels pervaded the darkness merely by their perfumes—­the former with whiffs at a concealed bottle of Farina, the latter with a pastille counterfeiting the incense of the cathedral.  In a couple of hours from the Hotel de Hollande we reached Aachen, as the fond natives call the burgh so dear to Charlemagne.  Deprived of that magnificent mirror, the Rhine, the pretty towns throughout this part of Germany seem but like country belles.  We should hardly have paused at Aix but for the sake of affording a rest to Charles, who grew worse whenever lunch-time competed with railway-time.  As for the dull little city, for us it was a wilderness, with the blank cleanliness of the desert, except in so far as it was informed and populated by the memory of Charlemagne.

[Illustration:  The THRONED corpse.]