Men, women, and children flocked out from neighboring cottages and joined the crowd; the pale boy was petted, and stared at, and commiserated, and water was brought for him to drink and bathe his bruises in.  And such another clatter of tongues!  All who had seen the catastrophe were describing it at once, and each trying to talk louder than his neighbor; and one youth of a superior genius ran a little way up the hill, called attention, tripped, fell, rolled down among us, and thus triumphantly showed exactly how the thing had been done.

Harris and I were included in all the descriptions; how we were coming along; how Hans Gross shouted; how we looked up startled; how we saw Peter coming like a cannon-shot; how judiciously we got out of the way, and let him come; and with what presence of mind we picked him up and brushed him off and set him on a rock when the performance was over.  We were as much heroes as anybody else, except Peter, and were so recognized; we were taken with Peter and the populace to Peter’s mother’s cottage, and there we ate bread and cheese, and drank milk and beer with everybody, and had a most sociable good time; and when we left we had a handshake all around, and were receiving and shouting back Leb’ WOHL’s until a turn in the road separated us from our cordial and kindly new friends forever.

We accomplished our undertaking.  At half past eight in the evening we stepped into Oppenau, just eleven hours and a half out of Allerheiligen—­one hundred and forty-six miles.  This is the distance by pedometer; the guide-book and the Imperial Ordinance maps make it only ten and a quarter—­a surprising blunder, for these two authorities are usually singularly accurate in the matter of distances.

CHAPTER XXIV [I Protect the Empress of Germany]

That was a thoroughly satisfactory walk—­and the only one we were ever to have which was all the way downhill.  We took the train next morning and returned to Baden-Baden through fearful fogs of dust.  Every seat was crowded, too; for it was Sunday, and consequently everybody was taking a “pleasure” excursion.  Hot! the sky was an oven—­and a sound one, too, with no cracks in it to let in any air.  An odd time for a pleasure excursion, certainly!

Sunday is the great day on the continent—­the free day, the happy day.  One can break the Sabbath in a hundred ways without committing any sin.

We do not work on Sunday, because the commandment forbids it; the Germans do not work on Sunday, because the commandment forbids it.  We rest on Sunday, because the commandment requires it; the Germans rest on Sunday because the commandment requires it.  But in the definition of the word “rest” lies all the difference.  With us, its Sunday meaning is, stay in the house and keep still; with the Germans its Sunday and week-day meanings seem to be the same—­rest the tired part,