“Alas! how little veneration we have!” said Flemming.  “I could not help closing the discussion with a jest.  An ill-timed levity often takes me by surprise.  On all such occasions I think of a scene at the University, where, in the midst of a grave discussion on the possibility of Absolute Motion, a scholar said he had seen a rock splitopen, from which sprang a toad, who could not be supposed to have any knowledge of the external world, and consequently his motion must have been absolute.  The learned Professor, who presided on that occasion, was hardly more startled and astonished, than was our learned Professor, five minutes ago.  But come; wind up your watch, and let us go to bed.”

“By the way,” said the Baron, “did you mind what a curious head he has.  There are two crowns upon it.”

“That is a sign,” replied Flemming, “that he will eat his bread in two kingdoms.”

“I think the poor man would be very thankful,” said the Baron with a smile, “if he were always sure of eating it in one.  He is what the Transcendentalists call a god-intoxicated man; and I advise him, as Sauteul advised Bossuet, to go to Patmos and write a new Apocalypse.”

CHAPTER VII.  MILL-WHEELS AND OTHER WHEELS.

A few days after this the Baron received letters from his sister, telling him, that her physicians had prescribed a few weeks at the Baths of Ems, and urging him to meet her there before the fashionable season.

“Come,” said he to Flemming; “make this short journey with me.  We will pass a few pleasant days at Ems, and visit the other watering-places of Nassau.  It will drive away the melancholy day-dreams that haunt you.  Perhaps some future bride is even now waiting for you, with dim presentiments and undefined longings, at the Serpent’s Bath.”

“Or some widow of Ems, with a cork-leg!” said Flemming, smiling; and then added, in a toneof voice half jest, half earnest, “Certainly; let us go in pursuit of her;—­

`Whoe’er she be,

That not impossible she,

That shall command my heart and me.

Where’er she lie,

Hidden from mortal eye,

In shady leaves of destiny.’”

They started in the afternoon for Frankfort, pursuing their way slowly along the lovely Bergstrasse, famed throughout Germany for its beauty.  They passed the ruined house where Martin Luther lay concealed after the Diet of Worms, and through the village of Handschuhsheimer, as old as the days of King Pepin the Short,—­a hamlet, lying under the hills, half-buried in blossoms and green leaves.  Close on the right rose the mountains of the mysterious Odenwald; and on the left lay the Neckar, like a steel bow in the meadow.  Farther westward, a thin, smoky vapor betrayed the course of the Rhine; beyond which, like a troubled sea, ran the blue, billowy Alsatian hills.  Song of birds, and sound of evening bells, and fragrance of sweet blossoms filled the air; and silent and slow sank the broad red sun, half-hidden amid folding clouds.