After a few hours’ drive, they were looking down from the summit of a hill right upon the house-tops of Ems.  There it lay, deep sunk in the hollow beneath them, as if some inhabitant of Sirius, like him spoken of in Voltaire’s tale of Micromegas, held it in the hollow of his hand.  High and peaked rise the hills, that throw their shadows into this romantic valley, and at their base winds the river Lahn.  Our travellersdrove through the one long street, composed entirely of hotels and lodging-houses.  Sick people looked out of the windows, as they passed.  Others were walking leisurely up and down, beneath the few decapitated trees, which represent a public promenade; and a boy, with a blue frock and crimson cap, was driving three donkeys down the street.  In short, they were in a fashionable watering-place; as yet sprinkled only by a few pattering drops of the summer rain of strangers, which generally follows the first hot days.

On alighting at the London Hotel, the Baron found—­not his sister, but only a letter from her, saying she had changed her mind and gone to the Baths of Franconia.  This was a disappointment, which the Baron pocketed with the letter, and said not a word more about either.  It was his way; his life-philosophy in small things and great.  In the evening, they went to an esthetic tea, at the house of the Frau Kranich, the wife of a rich banker of Frankfort.

“I must tell you about this Frau Kranich,” said the Baron to Flemming, on the way.  “She is a woman of talent and beauty, and just in the prime of life.  But, unfortunately, very ambitious.  Her mania is, to make a figure in the fashionable world; and to this end she married a rich banker of Frankfort, old enough to be her father, not to say her grandfather, hoping, doubtless, that he would soon die; for, if ever a woman wished to be a widow, she is that woman.  But the old fellow is tough and won’t die.  Moreover, he is deaf, and crabbed, and penurious, and half the time bed-ridden.  The wife is a model of virtue, notwithstanding her weakness.  She nurses the old gentleman as if he were a child.  And, to crown all, he hates society, and will not hear of his wife’s receiving or going into company.”

“How, then, can she give soirees?” asked Flemming.

“I was just going to tell you,” continued the Baron.  “The gay lady has no taste for long evenings with the old gentleman in the back chamber;—­for being thus chained like a criminal under Mezentius, face to face with a dead body.  So she puts him to bed first, and—­”

“Gives him opium.”

“Yes, I dare say; and then gives herself a soiree, without his knowing any thing about it.  This course of deception is truly hateful in itself, and must be particularly so to her, for she is not a low, or an immoral woman; but one of those who, not having strength enough to complete the sacrifice they have had strength enough to commence, are betrayed into a life of duplicity and falsehood.”