From this town we went straight to Baden-Baden.  Here I abandoned Minna and her friend to the seductions of the roulette-table, while I availed myself of a letter of introduction from Count Pourtales to Countess Hacke, a lady-in-waiting on her Royal Highness, through whom I hoped to be presented to her exalted patroness.  After a little delay I duly received an invitation to meet her in the Trinkhalle at five o’clock in the afternoon.  It was a wet, cold day, and at that hour the whole surroundings of the place seemed absolutely devoid of life as I approached my momentous rendezvous.  I found Augusta pacing to and fro with Countess Hacke, and as I approached she graciously stopped.  Her conversation consisted almost entirely of assurances that she was completely powerless in every respect, in response to which I imprudently cited the hint received from the King of Saxony that I should offer her my personal thanks for previous intervention on my behalf.  This she seemed evidently to resent, and dismissed me with an air of indifference meant to show that she took very little interest in my concerns.  My old friend Alwine Frommann told me later that she did not know what there was about me that displeased the Princess, but thought it might possibly be my Saxon accent.

This time I left the much-praised paradise of Baden without carrying away any very friendly impression, and at Mannheim boarded a steamer, accompanied only by Minna, on which for the first time I was borne along the famous Rhine.  It struck me as very strange that I should so often have crossed the Rhine without having once made the acquaintance of this most characteristic historical thoroughfare of mediaeval Germany.  A hasty return to Cologne concluded this excursion, which had lasted only a week, and from which I returned to face once more the solution of the problems of my Parisian enterprise, now opening out painfully before me.

One factor which seemed likely greatly to relieve the difficulties confronting me was to be found in the friendly relationship into which the young banker, Emil Erlanger, was pleased to enter towards me.  This I owed, in the first place, to an extraordinary man named Albert Beckmann, a former Hanoverian revolutionary, and afterwards private librarian to Louis Napoleon, who was at this time a press agent for several interests, respecting which I was never quite clear.  This man succeeded in making my acquaintance as an open admirer, in which capacity he showed himself remarkably obliging.  He now informed me that M. Erlanger, by whom he was also employed in connection with the press, would be pleased to know me.  I was on the point of bluntly declining the honour, saying that I wanted to know nothing about any banker except with regard to his money, when he answered my jest by telling me in all seriousness that it was precisely in this way that M. Erlanger desired to serve me.  As a result of this invitation I made the acquaintance of