There were a few people walking up and down in the alley, making the most of the moment of dry weather.  They saluted one another like acquaintances, and three clean-shaven, walnut-faced old peasants bowed in response to March’s stare, with a self-respectful civility.  They were yeomen of the region of Ansbach, where the country round about is dotted with their cottages, and not held in vast homeless tracts by the nobles as in North Germany.

The Bavarian who had imparted this fact to March at breakfast, not without a certain tacit pride in it to the disadvantage of the Prussians, was at the supper table, and was disposed to more talk, which he managed in a stout, slow English of his own.  He said he had never really spoken English with an English-speaking person before, or at all since he studied it in school at Munich.

“I should be afraid to put my school-boy German against your English,” March said, and, when he had understood, the other laughed for pleasure, and reported the compliment to his wife in their own parlance.  “You Germans certainly beat us in languages.”

“Oh, well,” he retaliated, “the Americans beat us in some other things,” and Mrs. March felt that this was but just; she would have liked to mention a few, but not ungraciously; she and the German lady kept smiling across the table, and trying detached vocables of their respective tongues upon each other.

The Bavarian said he lived in Munich still, but was in Ansbach on an affair of business; he asked March if he were not going to see the manoeuvres somewhere.  Till now the manoeuvres had merely been the interesting background of their travel; but now, hearing that the Emperor of Germany, the King of Saxony, the Regent of Bavaria, and the King of Wurtemberg, the Grand-Dukes of Weimar and Baden, with visiting potentates of all sorts, and innumerable lesser highhotes, foreign and domestic, were to be present, Mrs. March resolved that they must go to at least one of the reviews.

“If you go to Frankfort, you can see the King of Italy too,” said the Bavarian, but he owned that they probably could not get into a hotel there, and he asked why they should not go to Wurzburg, where they could see all the sovereigns except the King of Italy.

“Wurzburg?  Wurzburg?” March queried of his wife.  “Where did we hear of that place?”

“Isn’t it where Burnamy said Mr. Stoller had left his daughters at school?”

“So it is!  And is that on the way to the Rhine?” he asked the Bavarian.

“No, no!  Wurzburg is on the Main, about five hours from Ansbach.  And it is a very interesting place.  It is where the good wine comes from.”

“Oh, yes,” said March, and in their rooms his wife got out all their guides and maps and began to inform herself and to inform him about Wurzburg.  But first she said it was very cold and he must order some fire made in the tall German stove in their parlor.  The maid who came said “Gleich,” but she did not come back, and about the time they were getting furious at her neglect, they began getting warm.  He put his hand on the stove and found it hot; then he looked down for a door in the stove where he might shut a damper; there was no door.