for himself, but also on behalf of two of his friends, who joined us at our table; and our good-humour led us ultimately to champagne.  A splendid evening with a wonderful moon-rise shed its influence over the gladness of our spirits as we returned home late in the evening after this delightful excursion.  When we visited Schlangenbad (where Alwine Frommann was staying) in equally high spirits, our reckless humour beguiled us into making an even longer excursion to Rolandseck.  We made our first halt at Remagen, where we visited the handsome church, in which a young monk was preaching to an immense crowd, and we afterwards lunched in a garden on the bank of the Rhine.  We remained that night in Rolandseck, and next morning we went up the Drachenfels.  In connection with this ascent, an adventure happened which had a merry sequel.  On the return journey, after getting out of the train at the railway station and crossing the Rhine, I missed my letter-case containing a note for two hundred marks; it had slipped out of my overcoat pocket.  Two gentlemen who had joined us on the way from the Drachenfels immediately offered to retrace their steps, a somewhat arduous undertaking, to hunt for the lost object.  After a few hours they returned, and handed me the letter-case with its contents intact.  Two stone-cutters at work on the summit of the mountain had found it.  They restored it at once, and the honest fellows were presented with a handsome reward.  The happy issue to this adventure had, of course, to be celebrated by a good dinner with the best wine.  The story was not completed for me until a long time afterwards.  In 1873, on my entering a restaurant in Cologne, the host introduced himself to me as the man who, eleven years previously, had catered for us at the inn on the Rhine, and had changed that very two-hundred-mark note for me.  He then told me what had happened to that note.  An Englishman, to whom he had related the adventure of the note on the same day, offered to buy it from him for double its value.  The host declined any such transaction, but allowed the Englishman to have the note on the promise of the latter to stand champagne to all those present at the time.  The promise was fulfilled to the letter.

An invitation to Osthofen from the Weisheimer family was the origin of a less satisfactory excursion than the one described above.  We put up there for one night after being compelled on the previous day to take part at all hours in the frolics of a peasant wedding-feast which was simply interminable.  Cosima was the only one who managed to keep in a good temper throughout the proceedings.  I supported her to the best of my abilities.  But Bulow’s depression, which had increased during the preceding days, grew deeper and deeper, was aggravated by every possible incident, until at last it developed into an outbreak of fury.  We tried to console ourselves with the reflection that a similar infliction could never again fall to our lot.  The following day, while I was preparing for my departure, and brooding over other sources of dissatisfaction at my position, Cosima induced Hans to continue the journey as far as Worms in the hope of finding something refreshing and cheering in a visit to the ancient cathedral there, and from that place they followed me later to Biebrich.