“I hope I shall often see you again,” I said; on which I own poor Manasseh gave a dreadful grin, and shot back into his parlor.

I ran home, clutching the ten delicious, crisp hundred pounds, and the dear little fifty which made up the account.  I flew through the streets again.  I got to my chambers.  I bolted the outer doors.  I sank back in my great chair, and slept. . . .

My first thing on waking was to feel for my money.  Perdition!  Where was I?  Ha!—­on the table before me was my grandmother’s snuff-box, and by its side one of those awful—­those admirable—­ sensation novels, which I had been reading, and which are full of delicious wonder.

But that the guillotine is still to be seen at Mr. Gale’s, No. 47, High Holborn, I give you my honor.  I suppose I was dreaming about it.  I don’t know.  What is dreaming?  What is life?  Why shouldn’t I sleep on the ceiling?—­and am I sitting on it now, or on the floor?  I am puzzled.  But enough.  If the fashion for sensation novels goes on, I tell you I will write one in fifty volumes.  For the present, DIXI.  But between ourselves, this Pinto, who fought at the Colosseum, who was nearly being roasted by the Inquisition, and sang duets at Holyrood, I am rather sorry to lose him after three little bits of Roundabout Papers.  Et vous?

Bourgonef

I

AT A TABLE D’HOTE

At the close of February, 1848, I was in Nuremberg.  My original intention had been to pass a couple of days there on my way to Munich, that being, I thought, as much time as could reasonably be spared for so small a city, beckoned as my footsteps were to the Bavarian Athens, of whose glories of ancient art and German Renaissance I had formed expectations the most exaggerated—­ expectations fatal to any perfect enjoyment, and certain to be disappointed, however great the actual merit of Munich might be.  But after two days at Nuremberg I was so deeply interested in its antique sequestered life, the charms of which had not been deadened by previous anticipations, that I resolved to remain there until I had mastered every detail and knew the place by heart.

I have a story to tell which will move amidst tragic circumstances of too engrossing a nature to be disturbed by archaeological interests, and shall not, therefore, minutely describe here what I observed in Nuremberg, although no adequate description of that wonderful city has yet fallen in my way.  To readers unacquainted with this antique place, it will be enough to say that in it the old German life seems still to a great extent rescued from the all-devouring, all-equalizing tendencies of European civilization.  The houses are either of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, or are constructed after those ancient models.  The citizens have preserved much of the simple manners and customs of